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You are not ‘just a parent.’ You are a key player on the team.
I want professionals to understand that there is so much more to my daughter than her hearing levels. She is not just an audiogram. She is not just a test score. She is a child who just happens to be hard of hearing.
I would like professionals to understand that parents and professionals are a TEAM with the best interest of the individual child as the central focus.
No one knows or understands a child like his or her parents. The fact that your child is deaf or hard of hearing does not give professionals the right to believe that their opinion or understanding is better than yours. There is more to training a child than a cut and dry opinion. Each child is unique, and only the parent has that built-in sense of knowing where that child is.
I think that sometimes professionals see things and automatically put us in a category without even getting to know us. Without even realizing it, they are putting stress on our families that doesn't need to be there.
Each of us is an individual, each of us handle things in different ways. For some of us, a child who is deaf or hard of hearing is a breeze. For others it is a struggle. We all have challenges in different areas, and too many times professionals don't take the time to find out who we are and who our children are. We aren't the families of previous years and the dynamics of our children and families are different, so our needs are different.
When professionals acknowledge that the parent knows the child in a way they never will, they can tap into the best resource possible.
I want professionals to know that despite my daughter's multiple disabilities and developmental delays, she is capable of doing many things, with good potential for the future.
