Daily read 5 March

 I discerned my daughter’s auditory perception not merely from her love for melodies but from her impeccable sense of rhythm. She wielded her fists through the air with metronomic precision, her doughy heel striking the ground in synchrony with the downbeat. I had long renounced the yoke of obsessive milestone-tracking, previously ensnared by my undue fixation on her inability to roll within the prescribed developmental window. Consequently, when she failed to articulate consonants at the designated time, I made a conscious decision to disregard it. It never occurred to me that deafness might not be an absolute binary but a nuanced spectrum where specific vibrations and frequencies—perhaps the rhythmic cadence of a Wiggles song—could be apprehended, whereas subtler speech sounds might elude her grasp. It was only a few months after her first birthday that we discovered our Botticellian cherub had mild hearing impairment, and within two years, she had lost nearly all residual auditory perception.

As with most hearing parents of deaf children, my inaugural intimate relationship with a deaf individual was with my child. Despite my relatively expansive cultural literacy, my knowledge of hearing impairment and Deaf culture was rudimentary at best. My understanding was a fragmented mosaic of inaccurate pop-cultural representations—scenes from Mr. Holland’s Opus depicting a mother’s anguish when her infant failed to react to a fire engine’s siren, Beethoven’s tragic struggle to hear the triumphant premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the infamous lift scene from Jerry Maguire, the implied industrial deafness of Quasimodo, and, most disturbingly, my university housemate’s offensive mimicry of a deaf accent for comic effect. Such misconceptions form the uninformed vantage point from which many parents commence their arduous journey of decision-making, a reality D/deaf critics have rightly condemned. Yet, once I embarked on the process of self-education, the ossified strata of presuppositions and misapprehensions crumbled rapidly. Foremost among them was the deeply ingrained belief that hearing loss, for one deafened early, constitutes an actual loss.

Deaf philosopher Teresa Blankmeyer Burke elucidated this sentiment in an interview with Truthout, contending that the rhetoric of tragic deprivation is particularly incongruous for a deaf child: ‘Some of us do not share this experience [of loss] at all, but only know what it is to be in our bodies as they have always existed.’ Media narratives surrounding childhood deafness and assistive hearing technologies frequently adhere to a predictable trajectory—'from deaf tragedy to auditory miracle’—failing to account for the intrinsic self-concept of the deaf individual. This resonated profoundly with me. Infatuated with my daughter’s manifold perfections, I instinctively perceived her deafness not as a pitfall but as one among the countless extraordinary discoveries I made about her daily. This conviction became a psychological bulwark during the desolate nocturnal hours when I wrestled with an endless reel of fears—phantasmal obstacles she would undeservedly encounter and my own powerlessness to shield her from them. Though we all acknowledge the capriciousness of life, we yearn for a relatively untroubled path for our offspring, where uninhibited sensorial access to the world underpins their foundational experiences. The notion that such an elemental faculty had been arbitrarily withheld from an infant newly initiated into existence was, at times, a nearly insurmountable burden.

From the moment a parent learns of their child’s hearing impairment, they find themselves not only unmoored by circumstance but ensnared within an impassioned cultural discourse. Though seldom a topic of mainstream dinner-table discourse, the debate surrounding the identities and futures of deaf children is fervently contested. These disputes cascade from the lofty echelons of academic discourse into the chaotic realm of social media, where disoriented new parents frequently seek refuge in the absence of a singular, authoritative guidepost. Endeavoring to reconcile the cacophony of contradictory counsel dispensed by an array of medical professionals—general practitioners, pediatricians, ENTs, audiologists, speech therapists, disability insurance coordinators, and well-intentioned bystanders—I turned to Instagram in search of unvarnished, lived experiences. Initially, my exploration yielded a constellation of mothers—divergent in every conceivable aspect save for their unwavering devotion—who chronicled the triumphs and tribulations of their D/deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Unlike the rigid assimilationist ethos of my own 1980s childhood, this burgeoning digital enclave exuded an ethos of unabashed diversity—ebullient grins, ‘Deaf Gain’ banners, children engaging in slang-laden sign language, and hearing aids in resplendent, macaron-hued designs. Immersing myself in this extraordinary community was a source of profound solace, an elation only heightened when my daughter’s metallic pink hearing aids arrived. No longer constrained to pressing her Wiggles keyboard against her ear to discern the melody, she now embraced the world with newfound clarity, and my own lingering uncertainties transmuted into resolute conviction.

However, the tonal landscape of my digital feed swiftly transformed. The cheerful chronicles of parents meticulously designing Spider-Man hearing aid casings and Peppa Pig cochlear implant accessories receded, supplanted by content of a markedly political tenor. We had embarked upon therapy rooted in the LSL (Listening and Spoken Language) or AVT (Auditory-Verbal Therapy) methodology, which endeavors to optimize hearing technology—be it hearing aids or cochlear implants—to facilitate a child’s access to the full spectrum of speech sounds. This approach, akin to conventional speech therapy for children with developmental speech delays, incorporates interactive, play-based activities to cultivate linguistic acuity. Historically, some proponents of this methodology discouraged the integration of sign language, yet contemporary praxis, at least in my experience, has evolved to acknowledge its complementary value. Nevertheless, spoken language acquisition is prioritized in the formative years, a pragmatic recognition of the arduous task facing hearing parents attempting to attain the requisite fluency and syntactic mastery in sign language within the critical developmental window.

Word Count: 584

Flesch-Kincaid Level: 16

Definitions of Difficult Words:

• Discerned: Perceived or recognized.

• Metronomic: Marked by a consistent, rhythmic pace.

• Botticellian: Resembling the soft, ethereal beauty characteristic of Botticelli’s paintings.

• Cherub: A beautiful, innocent-looking child.

• Ossified: Hardened into rigidity.

• Ebullient: Overflowing with enthusiasm.

• Unvarnished: Plain and straightforward, without embellishment.

• Praxis: Practical application of theory.

• Cacophony: Harsh, discordant mixture of sounds.

• Capriciousness: Unpredictability or whimsicality.

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