Do you know how hearing impaired children live?
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Do you know how hearing impaired children live? Or children in wheelchairs? What is their daily routine? What are their joys and challenges?
Today we will talk about children with hearing impairment. Lilia Bilyk, senior trainer of the Inclusive Friendly project, speech therapist of NGO “Feel”, as well as mother of a daughter with hearing aids and deafness, will help to understand the rules of communication with this category of children.
Deaf children receive the opportunity to install cochlear implants free of charge from the state. But the main thing is not to waste time. It is precisely in order to detect the problem as soon as possible and to receive help in time, from the beginning of 2022, in all maternity hospitals, the hearing of newborns will be checked. This is a mandatory screening that should be repeated at 3 months, 3 years and 6 years, before school.
Daughter Lilia had implants to compensate for her hearing loss when she was two years old. This enabled the girl to hear and learn to speak on an equal footing with her peers. But the first years of life still had to catch up. The consequences are felt even now, although Lilia’s daughter is already a teenager. Liliya shares: “I was faced with the fact that my daughter does not learn German at school. For her, Ukrainian is practically artificially learned. Deafness from birth means that at the age of two we started learning our native language as a foreign language. That is, there was no such moment , when, as they say, “a child hears words in its mother’s womb.” And then two more years were lost.”
Lilia Bilyk explains: “At the first stages of diagnosing a child’s development, I see that development varies greatly depending on the degree of hearing loss (or deafness) and the severity of its destructive impact. Modern medicine and state programs for the installation of cochlear implants make it possible to compensate for hearing loss even in cases where it is completely absent. But the period of deafness does not pass without a trace for everyone.It is important to establish a diagnosis in time for rehabilitation.
Often, parents who believe in a miracle until the child is 6 or 7 years old, waste time, saying, “holy places will help us”, “it will outgrow”, “it can be cured”. I’m currently working with a girl who had an implant at just 8 years old, and her parents knew she couldn’t hear when she was a year old. Dad was alive until she was 6 years old, and he was so against it that mom couldn’t do anything. Dad died, and only after that the girl was first fitted with a hearing aid, and then cochlear implants. Unfortunately, she will not speak the way you and I do, and there is no understanding of speech yet. The work is still unfinished, and the prospects are not very positive.”
| Lilia Bilyk, senior trainer of the Inclusive Friendly project, speech therapist of the NGO “Vitchuy” |
A way out for such children can be the use of sign language and visiting educational institutions – kindergarten, school – in which they know how to work with such children. But everything must happen on time, and the success of such a child’s education and life depends on whether high-quality support (rehabilitation, correction, education, etc.) tailored specifically to his needs and developmental characteristics will be provided as early as possible.
Now Lilia’s daughter is already a teenager, she has friends, she is no different from her peers. But the topic of her disability is unpleasant for her. She does not want special treatment, hides her speech processor under her hair and avoids questions and conversations about it. According to Lilia’s observations, the younger the children, the easier it is for them to be interested in them.
Such an age-specific feature in the perception of the diversity of people applies not only to people with disabilities themselves, but also to their environment. Lilia recalls the experience of lectures she and a colleague held at school a few years ago.
Specialists told schoolchildren about hearing impairment, showed hearing aids and implants, and explained how they work.
“Then I asked the children if anyone knew who a “disabled person” was. And in the first grade, they raised their hands and said that you can’t talk like that. And when I asked the same thing in the 11th grade, the students already said that the disabled are people who have something wrong with them. These were different classes in the same school. The earlier you explain to a child who people with disabilities are, the easier it will be for them to understand. My daughter in the first grade loved teaching her friends sign language. They used it for clues on lessons. My daughter showed her classmates how she can hear and how she can’t. Now you can’t force a teenager to do it,” says the speech therapist.
The attitude in the team begins with nuances that not everyone can notice. At the school where Lilia’s daughter studies, there is a girl with cerebral palsy. When my daughter used to mention her in her stories about school, she automatically added to her name: “The one who doesn’t walk well.”
Lilia explained that this clarification is unnecessary, you don’t need to emphasize it every time you talk about a person. A person has a name, and that is enough. This is the basic rule: the child’s diagnosis is not his middle name. It does not define her personality.
Lilia shared interesting facts about the life of people with cochlear implants, which other people may not know about, and sometimes they don’t even think to ask. Or they will shy away from asking such questions so as not to hurt their feelings.
The specialist says: “Cochlear implants come from different manufacturers and with different additional functionality. But everyone who wears implants has “devices” in their heads and ears, which cost from 300,000 hryvnias. Therefore, physical education, for example, should be done very carefully: if if a ball flies into the head, it will not only be painful, but also expensive.
Devices or speech processors run on batteries or accumulators. So if you miss the moment of charging or changing the batteries, a person sinks into silence. That’s why I recommend always keeping eye contact. My daughter, for example, is good at lip reading. This is an additional method of communication in such a case.
If a person with implants wants to listen to music in headphones, he has two options. The first is to take headphones that are large enough to cover the entire ear along with the processor. The second – if the implant is more technological, then it can be connected to the phone via bluetooth and the sound will simply go “to the head”, so to speak. In-ear headphones are of no use to people with cochlear implants, because the microphone picks up sound outside the ear, not inside the ear.
Language processors and devices have their own technical settings. They must be updated and adjusted once a year. This, I think, is something that teachers should know, just in case, because what usually works can at some point go astray. And the child may not immediately understand this. Again, the way out will be eye contact.
One option for communication is a titration system. There are applications in the phone that convert sound to text. This will simplify communication, especially when a person has a poor understanding of oral speech, but must be able to read quickly.
In general, communication does not depend on the device or speech processor, but on the desire to communicate. When you see a person with a device on their ears, it already shows that they can hear you. And already during communication, you will find out whether he fully understands. It is not necessary to ask whether a person has hearing aids or not.
If they are, you will see them anyway. Or you will see in a person’s ear an in-ear tab, mostly made of transparent material. They are like singers during performances. Or it can be an in-ear device similar to air pods. Or (in the case of implantation) the person will have a processor on the ear (behind the ear). You should not focus your attention on devices, because a person may feel awkward.
What you should definitely do is talk while facing the person and saying your words clearly. This is a sign of respect for any interlocutor, regardless of whether he has a hearing impairment or not. During the conversation, it will become clear how to communicate better – loudly or quietly, slowly or quickly. Perhaps, in addition, you will show something with gestures, write something. Or even use a phone app or other digital tool to communicate. But you should definitely not be afraid. If there is a desire and willingness to communicate, then the means will always be found!”.
Darya Gerasimchuk, Adviser – Commissioner of the President of Ukraine on children’s rights and child rehabilitation, with the support of UNICEF, especially for the UP. Life
Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.
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