What Is Aural Rehabilitation In Jennifer Rosner's If A Tree Falls

Jennifer Rosner, author of “If a Tree Falls” gives an inside glimpse into her life of suddenly becoming a mother to a daughter named Sophia, who has a severe hearing loss. As someone who hears, this uncertain event brought her closer to her family from generations ago. Rosner begins with the process of become a new mother and finding out that her child is born with a hearing loss. The new born hearings screenings and the devastating speech that is given to mothers whose children fail that screening. Unsure of what is yet to come she buries herself into research on the deaf and hard of hearing culture. Having become obsessed Rosner learns that the hearing loss that her child is diagnosed with is genetic. From generations before her, Rosner …show more content…
Through Rosner’s experience the reader sees the process of a newborn hearing screening through the eyes of a mother. Rosner goes into her personal struggles of feeling like an inadequate mother because she did not know how to communicate with her child. The process of choosing hearing aids and audiologist appointments and how joyous it is to here a child’s first word when it finally comes. Through Juliet’s experience we get insight on the process of receiving a cochlear implant and the turmoil a parent goes through to make that decision for their child. Rosner explains how developmentally her children learn and grew. The Rosner family hired ASL tutors to teach their family to communicate cohesively. The enrolled Sophia and Juliet into a deaf school that taught sign and oral language. Rosner also described the pain of not being accepted for the choices she made as a mother for her children. The book, “If a Tree Falls” provided a very clear understanding of the process that a family would go through upon learning that their child was deaf, from picking a cochlear implant company to annunciating vocabulary so their child could imitate their