The Apple Falls Far From the Tree
- Hearing Parents with a Deaf Child
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – according to the Urban Dictionary (Peckham, 2009) this idiom refers to a father/mother and son/daughter not being different from one another. But what happens when children are different than their parents?
“Bill is a lawyer. He works for a corporation and is very successful. His wife is a graduate of an Eastern woman’s college. They travel, enjoy entertaining and reside in a fashionable section of town. When their first-born child, Tina, was discovered to have a profound hearing loss, they were devastated. The child was to have followed in her parent’s footsteps. Now what can be done? They have a close friend who is a physician. He refers them to a friend who knows about a good private school that specializes in handling these kinds of problems. The school is out of town and expensive but has a fine reputation. Many of its graduate speak and do quite …show more content…
As is so often the case when parents discover their hearing loss of their child, for Bill and his wife this was a life changing development. They were never confronted with deafness and for them it is a completely new and overwhelming situation. Deaf children are born to speak a different language then their parents (i.e., sign language) and parents are often overwhelmed with raising a child and learn a new language simultaneously.
In the Netherlands, the number of deaf children that have two deaf parents is estimated to be between 3 and 5% of all deaf children, 10% have one deaf parent, and approximately 90 % of all deaf children have hearing parents (Van den Bogaerde, 2000). Given this high percentage, hearing parents need help and support in making decisions regarding their language choice (i.e. spoken language, signed language or both), the right school (i.e., hearing school vs. school for the deaf) and so
- Hearing Parents with a Deaf Child
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – according to the Urban Dictionary (Peckham, 2009) this idiom refers to a father/mother and son/daughter not being different from one another. But what happens when children are different than their parents?
“Bill is a lawyer. He works for a corporation and is very successful. His wife is a graduate of an Eastern woman’s college. They travel, enjoy entertaining and reside in a fashionable section of town. When their first-born child, Tina, was discovered to have a profound hearing loss, they were devastated. The child was to have followed in her parent’s footsteps. Now what can be done? They have a close friend who is a physician. He refers them to a friend who knows about a good private school that specializes in handling these kinds of problems. The school is out of town and expensive but has a fine reputation. Many of its graduate speak and do quite …show more content…
As is so often the case when parents discover their hearing loss of their child, for Bill and his wife this was a life changing development. They were never confronted with deafness and for them it is a completely new and overwhelming situation. Deaf children are born to speak a different language then their parents (i.e., sign language) and parents are often overwhelmed with raising a child and learn a new language simultaneously.
In the Netherlands, the number of deaf children that have two deaf parents is estimated to be between 3 and 5% of all deaf children, 10% have one deaf parent, and approximately 90 % of all deaf children have hearing parents (Van den Bogaerde, 2000). Given this high percentage, hearing parents need help and support in making decisions regarding their language choice (i.e. spoken language, signed language or both), the right school (i.e., hearing school vs. school for the deaf) and so