"Your Lot in Life" paper revision Subject (Deaf Children) ADD to paper

Wallace 2

Savanah Wallace

October 14th 2013

Professor Holmes

PSY-210-90

“Your Lot In Life”

We were asked to write about the position of an individual who is dealing with a particular set of life circumstances. The thing I love most about this project is that I get to picture myself dealing with the issue rather than just giving my input on how other people would deal with it. I was given the topic of having a child with hearing loss. This topic made me think a lot about what my initial reaction would be and what route I would choose to help my child.

People don’t realize, but children being born with severe hearing loss are a more common case then you think, About 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born deaf or hard-of-hearing. Nine out of every 10 children who are born deaf are born to parents who can hear. Can you imagine the steps a parent must go through to ensure that their child grows up with all the necessary things to prepare them to live comfortably? At first I said neither can I, but through my research and experience with deaf children and their families I can now put myself in the child and parents shoes. I volunteer at a Children’s Attention Home, and have gotten some insight on how it affects the children and the family as well.

Deaf children miss out on a lot, and the first thing they miss out on occurs in the womb. The process called “Neuroplasticity- The ability to constantly change both the structure and function of cell involved in trauma and in this case the ability of a baby’s brain to change with learning “. Normally through brain development the first information to be processed would be the sensory information. 20 weeks in the baby’s brain becomes pre-wired to accept and process sounds. The sounds a baby hears before birth are very important and can even build the knowledge and memory of the baby. Being that the baby is deaf, he or she does not start at the typical point a baby with hearing would and therefore is 20 weeks behind a typical baby brain development.

Children being deaf are affected in a number of ways. Emotionally they feel isolated at times and don’t feel like the get the opportunities that a hearing child gets. Deaf children often times do not know how to express their feelings, think about how difficult it might be to express being happy or sad if you don’t even know what that emotion is. Even basic feelings like sad, mad, happy, tired, and silly can be hard for children with a hearing loss to learn about. Working at the Attention Home, showed me that deaf children although lacking in one sense are very intelligent visually and that is how they learn visually. Through a lot of patience and teachings you can teach and guide your child to the knowledge they will need.

More than 90% of children with severe to profound hearing losses are born to normally hearing families.