We have all experienced making a decision for our child that we thought was the right one at the time, but later discovered that it might not have been the best choice after all. Unfortunately, that is a part of life for all of us. None of us is going to make the right decision every time. Fortunately, most decisions are not a matter of life or death, and we have the opportunity to re-evaluate the situation and look at other options.

Being flexible and open to other options is a critical part of raising a child with a hearing loss. When something isn't working for our children, we need to be able to admit it, search out advice from others and change directions in order to find a better solution. We also need to be able to forgive ourselves and accept that we made the best decision we could with the information that was available to us. We then need to move on and not look back.

~"I have learned over the years that you cannot go back and kick yourself for the decisions you made years ago. If you have done your research and feel that you are making the best decision at the time, you cannot second-guess yourself. You make your decisions based on the information you have at the time, and none of us make the right decision 100% of the time."

~"Let it go. We have all made choices that may not always work out as planned. But, as long as we support our children and continue to build their confidence, things will work out. We don't have a master plan to follow for deaf and hard of hearing children, so we make decisions based on what we feel is the best at the time. We can learn from it, and we may even find that what we've experienced may be helpful to someone else down the road."

~"Know that there is no right way for everyone. No one knows what the best thing is for your child, you just have to watch and look for signs that a certain method is not working and be willing to try other ways."

~"Gather all the information you can to make an informed decision in the first place. If things don't turn out as planned, re-evaluate the situation and make the necessary adjustments. Most things can be corrected. Don't be too hard on yourself, because no one makes the best decisions all of the time."

~"We all have to make decisions, and sometimes it's hard to know which is the right one. But you did the right thing…you made a decision. If it didn't work, well fine, you learned from it. You have a better understanding of the goal that you want to achieve, and you make the necessary changes. Don't be disheartened that you made a mistake. What counts is that you made the decision. It may be hard to work to change that decision, but you can do it, and your child will benefit from it."

~"Nothing is written in stone. If you find that the decision is not the best, change it. There are no rules here to be broken."

~"I used to joke with parents of older deaf children, 'Why isn't everything laid out for us? Why aren't all the big decisions obvious, due to other people's experiences? Why isn't there a plan that I can easily see will work for my child? Why are we still fighting battles?' The answer is that there are no clear-cut answers. Every child is an individual. Every child who has a hearing loss is different. Remember that life is about learning from our mistakes. Your child isn't the mistake. Of course it is difficult when you are in the middle of a 'learning experience,' and you're feeling guilty about making a decision and then re-deciding that it wasn't the best choice. We can drive ourselves crazy trying to find the right answer! If you simplify a 'wrong' decision to mean you lost time, your child missed an opportunity, your child missed out, then hey, it could have been worse. We are human, after all."

~"If you make a decision and decide that there was a better choice, be willing to change your mind. Don't spend valuable time feeling guilty, if you have done your homework. You need your energy for advocating, for working with your child, and for just being a loving, supportive family in a busy world."

~"All we can ever do is make the best decision for our children at the time. We can't go back and change things. It is, however, our responsibility to make informed decisions. Get all of the information possible and make sure you are making the decision in the best interest of the child, and not for your own ease."

~"We make decisions based on the information that is available to us at the time. When it turns out that a decision might not have been the best one, you need to remind yourself that you made that decision based on what you knew at the time, and that you felt it was the best decision. Don't waste time going back and beating yourself up over it. It is non-productive, and that energy would be much better spent on other, more important things."