As if the physical and emotional transformation from child to adult weren’t enough to cope with in the years from 12 to 20, add school, selecting a career path, relationships and the prom and you’ve got an overwhelming age – the teen years. Now contemplate going through all of that with a disability, like hearing loss. The singular most important task of adolescence and the teen years becomes
learning to face the challenges of life with a positive outlook. Happily, many teens with hearing loss are mastering the task and three of them have shared their stories with us in these pages. We notice a common theme: a supportive family is essential. And it seems some snazzy technology doesn’t hurt either.
Annie
I like to think of myself as a typical teenager. I’m 15 years old, a sophomore in high school and have a hearing loss. I’ve known about my hearing loss since I was in second grade. My parents took me to an ear, nose and throat specialist and then to several audiologists who diagnosed me with a hereditary hearing loss. My grandfather has pretty severe hearing loss and communicates by writing notes. My uncle is also hearing impaired and communicates with sign language.
I remember being very excited about getting hearing aids. Since I was the only person I knew who had hearing aids, I thought they were pretty cool. I even picked out a pair in a bright color. I wanted people to notice them! I felt really unique and different because I wore hearing aids. I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to talk about them or show them off to my friends.
That feeling changed over the years. Although I regularly had my hearing aids adjusted to my changing hearing loss, they just weren’t working as well as they should. Even my friends got tired of repeating things I couldn’t understand. I was always saying, “What?” If I said it two or three times during a conversation, my friends would just say, “Never mind.” I used to wonder what I was missing out on.
I was having diffi culty in the classroom, too. In my language arts class, we would get new spelling words every week. During a test, the teacher pronounced each word and we had to write it down. I dreaded this because some of the words I “heard” were completely wrong. I was embarrassed to ask her to keep repeating the words. The same thing happened in my Spanish class. Our teacher would play a song with a word left out and ask us to fi gure out what was missing. I hated when he called on me.
Even my family got tired of repeating everything two or three times. They would fi nally just say, “Forget it!” I was so embarrassed that I’d pretend that I had heard even when I didn’t have a clue what was being said.
Everyone was polite, but I knew that this social style could not go on forever. I felt this especially
when I was in eighth grade and learned that I had been nominated by the school principal for a leadership summit in Washington, D.C. The summit involved students from all across the country. We would have six days of touring Capitol Hill and the White House, visiting Arlington National Cemetery and the many memorials and meeting with politicians. I would have to travel alone on an airplane, walk around the city and interact with new people – I just couldn’t see this happening for me. I thought, “How can you have an adventure if you can’t hear?”
What I didn’t know was that my parents and my wonderful audiologist, Dr. Schwartzberg, ad arranged for me to receive a new pair of hearing aids before my trip.
When I went in for what I thought was a routine “fixer-upper” appointment for my old hearing aids, Dr. Schwartzberg was waiting with a big smile on his face. He had a display of the coolest instruments I had ever seen on his computer screen – in all of the coolest colors. He asked me what color I would choose. Then he told me that he had worked out arrangements to provide me with a pair of Deltas in time for my trip to Washington. I couldn’t believe it! Now I was going to be able to live in a whole new
world of sound. I could be a normal girl and have a normal conversation. I felt like the luckiest
girl in the world!
Dr. Schwartzberg fi tted my new Deltas and then conducted a variety of demonstrations with me. He dropped a paperclip on his desk and I actually heard a “clink.” Then he ran a hand over his shirt and I could hear the fabric rustling. He moved out into the hall and ran his hand along the wall and I could hear the sounds so clearly I just started laughing. Dr. Schwartzberg came back inside and put a magazine in front of his face and started talking and I could hear him. At the same time, I was hearing lots of other sounds – the computer humming, the fan, someone typing – and I wasn’t overwhelmed. Everything sounded more natural to me.
When I wore my new “shy violet” colored hearing aids to school the fi rst day, my friends were waiting and couldn’t believe how tiny they were. Everyone wanted to see them. That really improved
my self-confi dence. People would stand right next to me and they wouldn’t even notice them.
My trip to Washington for the student leadership summit was as wonderful as I could have hoped. It was the fi rst trip I had ever taken on my own. I knew that I’d be meeting students from all over the country with different accents and different patterns of speech. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. And more than anything, I didn’t want to be known as “the girl with the hearing aids.”
Well, that was almost two years ago. I laugh now when I realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong. If fact, my hearing loss never really came up. Except in one assignment where we had to tell some things about ourselves and I mentioned I was hard-of-hearing, no one seemed to notice my hearing aids. We were all too busy enjoying the summit, meeting with legislators, touring historic sites and getting to know each other.
I don’t know if it is different for other people with hearing loss but I think as I’ve become a teen the fact that I have a hearing loss is not as important as other things about me. When I got my fi rst hearing aids in second grade, it was such a dramatic thing. I remember thinking this was going to change my whole life. Now I know that hearing loss doesn’t have to be what you’re about. Now when someone asks me to describe myself, the fi rst thing I would think to say is not “I’m hard of hearing.” It’s wonderful to discover that I can really just be myself!
Arielle
Living in New York City, I have grown up with so many cultural opportunities and I love it – Broadway shows, movies and museums fi ll my life with knowledge. But as far as I can remember, I have had hearing loss, often causing me frustration at these cultural arenas. I realized early on what I was missing and by the time I was nine years old it was a life of frustration. If I went to see a movie, I asked my parents a million questions about what happened. When I went to see the circus, I did not know there was a ring master, something I fi nally realized when I was 11 years old.
When I was nine, my mother, also exasperated, started the Hearing Access Program, a guide for museums and theaters around New York City and the rest of the world to become more accessible for people with hearing loss by doing things like adding induction loops and captioning. It was my mother who taught me that if I strive with a passion and a goal for change, it will happen.
I have been helping the cause from the beginning and as I’ve matured, so have my jobs. I started out as the tester – on a day out I would test the equipment and say if it worked. At 12, I continued to test equipment and took part in a press conference with the Manhattan Borough president on why captioning and induction loops should be included on the mini-televisions in taxis. I also showed Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Mathew Dowd around the Historical Society in New York City, in order to show him what induction loops and captioning are and why they are so important. At 13, I appeared on “Inside City Hall” with Dominic Carter twice. The first time was to promote the Hearing Access Program and the second time was about a charity called Fighter Mom. That same year
I continued testing equipment and was also featured alongside my mother in People magazine’s
Hero section.
Do I feel triumphant? The answer is yes. While continuing to help others like me who strive to be like everyone else and go to cultural events, I also found a deeper meaning. I found myself in the midst of it all. I found a girl who loves to help and just wants to fi t in. To other teens out there: Strive for change with passion and a goal because only together can we succeed.
Caitlin
This fall Caitlin, 19, starts National Technical Institute of the Deaf (NTID). Even as she may wonder what lies ahead, she will face each day with the inner strength and positive attitude that make her a triumphant teen with hearing loss.
As chatty and outgoing as Caitlin is today, it’s difficult to think of her not talking until after age four, the age at which she was diagnosed with a speech delay. It wasn’t until kindergarten that her hearing loss became known. She worked with speech and occupational therapists and got her first hearing aids at age fi ve.
Her high school years started out rough as her needs to be accommodated in the classroom were refused. But her parents stood by her every step of the way and found a school better suited to her needs. She enrolled in and graduated last spring from the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, a career and technical high school.
In Caitlin’s junior year — her second year in the school – she was inducted into the National Technical Honor Society with an average of 94percent and the following year she earned an average of 97 percent. She was also big into extracurricular activities like sports. As a participant of Odyssey of the Mind, an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students, Caitlin learned to make clay bowls and participated in marketing them.
Caitlin participated in Skills USA during her senior year. “It’s where you compete against different schools in your half-day major. Mine was early childhood education. I didn’t place in Regionals but I still made it to State!” she said. “I didn’t win there either but it wasn’t about winning.”
An experience in the summer of 2007 showed Caitlin what her fi rst step out of high school should be. She attended Career Exploration Camp at NTID and learned shortly after camp that she tested so well that the administrators wanted to talk to her parents. During the camp Caitlin met kids from all over the United States and was thrilled with the total communication approach used throughout the event – every class used open captioning, sign language and speakers. Now she will benefi t from this highly accessible environment through her college years.
Caitlin’s interests keep blossoming and she keeps right on pushing the envelope to learn and do more. She is stronger for the adversity she has overcome and seems proud, not boastful, of the strides she makes. Caitlin’s hearing loss has become more profound and she is considering cochlear implants in the future. For now, she’s off to college with a smile and an attitude of being willing and ready to learn.
