Reaction of the family and others
Like the parents of children born with cerebral palsy, cleft palate, or some other major physical impairment, parents of children born deaf go through a grief process. How they move through the process is dependent on several conditions, including the unique coping mechanisms of the family, the quality and degree of outside professional assistance, and the child’s own adaptability to the blockage of the auditory channel. If deafness or impairment of hearing develops adventitiously, grief may be experienced but in a more varied or subtle manner. Again, much will depend on other variables. The reader will find a succinct and useful discussion of mourning as it applies to deafness in children in Boothroyd (1982). It will also be helpful to review the process as it is discussed in other chapters, in particular the adaptive process to child disability as identified by Shontz (1975)
More significant from our perspective are the specific effects of any degree of hearing impairment on individual family members, the marital relationship, and the overall family equilibrium.
Effects on individual family members
Feeling of anger, bitterness, disappointment, Frustration, and anger experienced by the parents in particular will vary greatly, depending on each parent’s unique association with the child and personal emotional stability. To some extent, the degree to which each parent has fulfilled or is fulfilling his or her own life’s goal will determine how well he or she will adjust to the child’s disability.
Much, too, will depend, certainly, on whether or not one or both parents of deaf children are hearing impaired or deaf. We hesitate to generalize outcomes of such circumstances because of the uniqueness of all parents. Conceivably, it is as possible for deaf parents provide the most educationally and habilitatively appropriate environment as it is possible for normal hearing parents to provide the least for theirs. Generally, though, the deaf child of normal hearing parents starts out with one major advantage : a potential auditory rich and stimulating linguistic environment.
We are more familiar with adventitiously hearing impaired youngsters in normal hearing families. The variety of effects of individual family members here are probably more infinite. Let us look at one such family.
The 11-year-old son had incurred a severe hearing loss three years previous to the referral, following a succession of serious middle ear infections and questionable medical management. Although very intelligent and sophisticated, the mother blamed herself for not having prevented the ultimate condition. Her marriage was relatively stable, but she felt unfulfilled as a woman and always considered her three children a burden even though there never had been any previous serious physical problems. Projecting her own guilt onto her severely deaf son, she felt compelled to dote on him and protect him from all life’s stressors. She shopped for the best professional help she could possibly find but “never could find the right hearing aid for him.” Her life had become a crusade that left little opportunity for her son to deal personally with his own struggles. Instead, the author was confronted with a fearful, dependent, uncommunicative youngster whi had few friends and was barely getting by in school.
This description is just one of the many possible illustrations of the effects of a child’s hearing impairment on one family member. It also is meant to illustrate the dynamic interplay between parent and child. Most important for us to understand is that parents do not necessarily pass though the various stages of grief process in an orderly fashion or at any one time. As Boothroyd (1982) clearly indicates, “The mourning sequence can be replayed several times in the parents’ lives.” We would add that any one stage may appear out of its classical sequence and may be manifest subtly or in combination with other stages. Therefore, an attitude such as denial by the parent may be expressed as a refusal to accept the hearing loss, the fitting of a hearing aid, modifying firmly entrenched behaviors, or any combination of these.
In any case, the child is affected either through overt or covert attitudes and actions by the parent. How readily the child falls victim to unresolved anguish, rejection, and helplessness of the parent may be due in part, as indicated earlier, to the child’s unique mode of coping or constitutional tolerance. Our task as caregivers is to assess the interplay or feelings, actions, and events to provide the best we have to offer professionally.
The way in which the family relates to the hearing impaired adolescent will have a profound influence on high school adjustment, “passage through puberty,” individual self-esteem, and career or vocational choice. Regardless of time of onset of the hearing loss, the family will need to continue to nurture and enhance the child through all of the struggles typically associated with adolescence and those directly or indirectly associated with hearing impairment. To either reject or overprotect at this time will only make the child more rebellious or dependent and maintain the parental-infant bond. A gradual separation needs to happen, whereby the adolescent begins the process of functioning autonomously as an adult.