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Parents Talk About Finding Out Their Child Has a Hearing Loss

Read this page to hear what other parents say about finding out their child is deaf.

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Click on the links to read the stories below. After you read the stories, tell us your story. And come back soon. We'll be adding more quotes from parents!

Some of the names have been changed to protect the family's privacy:

• David’s mom talks about getting the news from the audiologist.
• Ricky's mom talks about her feelings after learning her son was deaf.
• Danielle's mom talks about what happened when she went to see the audiologist, the day after the hearing loss was found.

I said, 'How do we assess David, moderate to severe?’ And she [the audiologist] looked at me and says oh no, severe to profound, and I was.....I went ‘what?’ And I started crying, and I said, ‘My God, is he ever going to speak, I mean, what does this really mean?’ And she said ‘He’s going to need a lot of help.’ That stunned me. To me that meant that he’s really not going to hear and benefit from listening... And this is just because I don’t know, but that sounded so serious to me. So I got home and I was on another mission. I came home, and as soon as I got home I called every Early Intervention Program that we were candidates for.

—   David's Mother

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Here we were a young married couple with our beautiful two-year-old daughter and Ricky was a baby. He was a boy and he was wonderful and marvelous and red headed. He was darling. He was going to go on and be a star. Whatever goes through your mind. And then somebody comes up to you and says wrong, this kid can't hear anything. He is deaf. You go from thinking he is going to be a star to this is a disaster. He is going to fail at everything. He is going to be awful. It is going to be a nightmare. But it is a while before you get your arms around it. You go into this deep dark hole. And when you come out of it, or when I came out of it, my goal was to give him back his stardom and to say, you can do anything you want with your life. You can be anything you want to be. And I am going to work really hard to make sure you get your opportunities and that this doesn't stay as a handicap.

—   Ricky's Mother

Want to know more about Ricky? Read his story here.

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I was in a daze. I went in there and they sat me down here. And then she said 'now you have to go back over there to Pre-register first.' And I'm carrying the baby. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm carrying her down to register and carrying her back. Okay. I'm a wreck at this point. She brings me into this room. She sits me down. Puts the baby on me and she turns, she turns Danielle's head and starts pouring pink goo into her ears. Now this is day two, okay. She is pouring the pink goop in and she is telling me you need to contact early intervention. Well, actually at her age its mental health, mental retardation. You'll need to contact welfare. And I, and I just lost it. I'm like, 'Welfare? Retardation? You're plain goofy. What are you doing? Who are you?' You know what I mean? She didn't offer me a tissue. There were people walking in and out of the room and I'm crying. And the baby is just exhausted and it is like four o'clock and I had made arrangements for [my 3 year old] because I didn't expect to be gone that long. So we get through the pink goop and I still didn't know what she was doing. And the baby fell asleep on me and I had to lay her down on the floor in there to call to make more arrangements.

—   Danielle's Mother

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