Many visible and invisible burdens can accompany a hearing loss diagnosis. Anna Tess Ed. D – FHSR Education Coordinator knows these, both as a person who lives with hearing loss herself and as a teacher of the deaf. In this blog, Anna outlines some of these burdens and offers tips for how parents can teach self-advocacy skills to children with hearing loss.
The burdens that come with hearing loss can include additional doctor’s appointments; extra equipment or support people; and listening fatigue, which is the increased cognitive load of listening harder, watching all of the visual cues closely, and working harder than typically-hearing peers to glean all of the information in a conversation or classroom. Students with hearing loss will often bluff when they can’t hear or misunderstand instruction, and will seldom ask questions when they need support. In addition, they may also struggle with behavioral issues caused by listening fatigue.
Teaching your child self-advocacy skills is so important!
Self-advocacy is a child’s ability to understand their hearing loss, take care of any devices they use, and ask for help – requesting repetition, clarification, or the arranging of an environment to facilitate better access.
Parents can start teaching self-advocacy young by teaching children how to carefully remove and insert their devices, and speaking up when they don’t hear something by simply saying “What?” or “Help.”
When teaching self-advocacy skills, it is important to start with device maintenance.
Show your child how to tell that their devices are working or not working, show them how to hand a parent or teacher their devices (instead of them taking them off and misplacing them), and establish a special place to charge and store devices (so they can always be found). Parents and teachers will have to prompt students to recognize whether a setting is loud or quiet and what they can do when a setting is loud or difficult to manage.
As students mature, parents and teachers need to work together and teach them to be their own advocates, and to speak for themselves.
Inevitably, there will come a time when another child asks what is on your child’s ears or why they are signing. Teach your child to explain their hearing loss and communicate what they need to be successful. It is good to practice a short few sentences your child can use to explain their hearing loss and their assistive devices to other children or adults.
Here are some scaffolding and repair strategies that can help your child with gaining more information or asking for clarification.
Practice these at home with your child so that they can use them confidently outside of the home.
Asking for Repetition
- What?
- What did you say?
- Can you say that again?
Asking for Clarification
- Can you move closer to me?
- Can you say that louder
- Can you say that clearer
- Can you say it slower?
Asking for More Information
- Can you give me more information?
- What does that mean?
- Can you tell me more?
As a parent you are your child’s best advocate, but as they grow they will need to become their own advocate. Starting early and helping your child learn these self-advocacy skills will help to set them up for success in the classroom and in life.
Here is a great resource that can be shared with your family and teachers.
For more self advocacy support, please contact Anna Tess at atess@fhsr.org
