the Deaf Girl Who could hear
When I think back to the moment when we learned our oldest daughter, Grace, was deaf, I realize that there are two things that would have helped make the experience easier: Immediate contact with at least one other mom who had been down the same road, and access to honest first-hand writing from a parents’ perspective on raising a deaf child.
With those two missing pieces in mind, I founded the Family to Family network in Washington, DC, an initiative that matches families of just-identified deaf and hard-of-hearing children with experienced families who can provide comfort and support. And, I started writing. Writing a book, The Deaf Girl Who Could Hear, writing articles, and writing posts for this site, BabbleOnWords.
In the beginning, it was difficult for me to imagine how much more potential cochlear implant (CI) technology had to offer than traditional hearing aids for a severely or profoundly deaf person. But the access to sound offered with a cochlear implant is orders of magnitude higher than with hearing aids. Especially when that person is profoundly deaf; most especially when it is a profoundly deaf young child.
