Chicago Tribune Story–A Daughter’s Journey with Hearing Aids
The hubby tossed me the “Perspective” section of the Chicago Tribune this morning. I almost never read this section of the newspaper but today, there was a side shot of a cute four-year-old girl sporting a hearing aid with a swirly pink and blue earmold.
Hear and Now? is written by Julie Vassilatos, a mom in Hyde Park, Illinois. She recounts the family’s journey of getting a diagnosis and finally fitting her daughter, Angeliki, with hearing aids. Or “hearing maids,” as her daughter describes them. Or perhaps it is “hearing mades,” her mom shares.
“Strangely, Angeliki doesn’t always want to hear as much as I want her to,” Julie writes. “Who wouldn’t love to hear everything better all the time?”
But I have say this– Julie is quick to understand. She goes on to explain how hearing aids amplify everything, and that hearing is exhausting work. “And it makes a little child sleepy and cranky,” she says.
As I’m typing this, my son is at the computer next to me with his rap music cranked up loudly. “Hey Mom,” he says, “Go put your hearing aids on. I want to share this new song that I downloaded.”
No thanks, honey. The silence is bliss this morning.
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Oh, I am so glad you shared something is different from anything on deafread. I remember back in my high school. When I got home from school, I was so tired, cranky, and mostly headaches. I was so relieved when I take my hearing aides off. I thanked and thanked my parents for allowing me not used my hearing aides all the summer I needed the most!
I understood that speechreading was hard work only because my wife said so, but I never considered hearing to be work. To me, to say that would be like saying breathing is hard work and I just don’t have the energy to do that today.
I can see where it would be nice to have the choice.
*snicker* Hearing maids.
Haha. Cute. Imagine a fully implanatable hearing aid/CI!?@#!
Unless there is a remote control that I could use to turn on and off the fully implantable device, I would choose to be blissfully deaf forever.
anna s
Thanks for posting this! You don’t see much in the news about hard of hearing kids! Makes me want to get Nolan’s “hearing maids” even more! LOL.
I know just how that little girl feels about her hearing maids. I wear mine at work, but they come off the minute I walk through the door at home. I explain to people it’s like wearing tight shoes all day. When I had normal hearing, to hear never bothered me. But when you wear hearing aids, you don’t have normal hearing. You hear so much extraneous NOISE. However, cochlear implants are supposed to be different because the sound doesn’t go through dysfunctional cochleas. I wouldn’t know since I don’t have an implant. Like Anna S. I would hope the new implantable aids would have an off button.
Hearing IS hard work, because we still do NOT hear well with hearing aids OR cochlear implants, and all that extra noise makes it harder. That’s the point.
When I wore aids I always felt like I was starining more. I think I expected and others expected me to hear everything. I remember crying from the pain of hearing crickets and traffic. And pretending to hear whispers.My ear woulkd get sore from the mold and then the soft mold came out and it was horrible! I was sensitive to it and my ear swelled shut. It took several weeks to hear anything at all.