Popping Gum

  You know how annoying it is when someone pops their gum? Yeah. Well, I never thought I would be so excited about popping gum. My husband and I were sitting with E in the floor playing and hubby began loudly popping his gum. E had been playing with his back to us and abruptly stopped and spun around looking for the sound. I told my husband, "He HEARD that!" We both spent the next few minutes popping gum and watching E for a reaction. Sure enough, he responded quite a few times before he seemed to decide that Mommy and Daddy had lost it and began to ignore us completely. This lead to downloading an iPhone app to measure the decibel level of our gum popping. Turns out that popping gum is actually much louder than I would have imagined! While this didn't indicate any better hearing for E, it did lead us to wonder what other things he hears that we have never considered before.

  This past Friday, we met up with another family in our area with a deaf child. It was a wonderful experience to meet their son and his two sisters. This little boy was five years old and had bilateral cochlear implants. We do not know if cochlear implants are going to be part of our journey, but we are heavily researching all of our options. It was a fantastic and informative experience to be able to ask questions directly to this very energetic boy and watch him play and interact with other kids. Surprisingly, the other children never even seemed to notice his CIs. It made me feel much better about E wearing his hearing aids. We made the choice not to try to hide his hearing aids, but I still worry that he will encounter stares and unwanted comments from time to time. We were able to get a lot of honest and candid information on the pros and cons of cochlear implants as well as some insight on raising a deaf child in mainstream culture.

  On another note, I really want to connect with other parents of children with hearing loss. If you are a reading this and are a parent with a deaf or HOH child or if you happen to be deaf or HOH yourself, please leave me a comment or email me because I would truly love to connect. We're still pretty new to all of this and I am looking for advice, encouragement, and insight.