/ By Vincent Cheong / Featured/ • • • / 0 Comments

How to overcome the urge to compare your deaf child to others

We’ve all heard the saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” But as a parent — especially as a parent of a deaf child — comparison is hard to avoid.

As parents to a child with cochlear implants, my husband and I are at the point in our journey where comparison is starting to become apparent in day-to-day life. We’ve spent so much time in our little bubble in the past few years due to COVID. Now that things are opening up and Cooper is getting older, we see more kids his age. I’d be lying if I said that’s it’s easy to focus on Cooper’s journey and his alone. It isn’t easy. I often find myself listening to kids his age speak, even hold conversations, and there’s a pang in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change our journey for the world. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard at points.

So, how do you acknowledge comparison without letting it dictate and affect daily life? Here’s what I’ve found helpful.

1. Remember Where You Started

I know personally, I get so focused on the now that I tend to forget where we began and how far we’ve come. Progress and learning happen gradually. But when you look back over an extended period of time, it’s pretty amazing how much can change. Early on in this journey, I got so excited when Cooper turned to a sound or tried to mimic something. Now, thanks to his cochlear implants, he locates sound with crazy accuracy and mimics full sentences. When I look at past milestones and then the milestones we are at now, it really puts things in perspective.

2. Remind Yourself That It Isn’t a Race

We are so programmed to compare and be competitive, even when we don’t realize it. Social media has only perpetuated this. People are always sharing their child’s accomplishments, as they should. But taking all that in as a parent of a child on a different path – like a child with cochlear implants –  can be overwhelming. It’s so easy to see another child around the same age as yours, speaking in full, clear sentences. Without consciously doing it, you begin to compare where that child is to where your deaf child is. It’s a draining cycle that can feel impossible to avoid.

In these moments, I have to remind myself that our path is a different one. That doesn’t make it less than, and it doesn’t make us behind. We just are where we are. And not only that, we get to celebrate so many little milestones that other families may not think about on a daily basis. I love those little magical moment. They truly do make me grateful that we get to walk this path.

3. Hold Onto the Moments That Make You Proud of Your Deaf Child

Like most things in life, it can be hard to focus on the positive when your attention is being pulled in so many directions. But, day-to-day, there are so many moments to be proud of your deaf child. If you have a hard time referring back to these in the hard moments, keep a literal running list or re-watch a video in which your child did something incredible. I like to refer to past videos in my camera roll, ones where Cooper really surprised me and my excitement in that moment shines through. It’s almost contagious and reminds me to put things in perspective. There are always moments like this. You just have to remember to look for them.

4. Realize It’s OK to Say No

I know, I know. This is hard. But if you know you are likely walking into a situation where you will find yourself comparing your child to others, it’s okay to say no. That’s not to say you should always avoid those situations. That isn’t a healthy approach either. But if it’s already been a hard week, or there is a particular reason you feel your mental well-being may be affected, it’s okay to not go to certain events. It’s good to be conscious of your own mental health because the way you are feeling can easily translate to your child. When it comes down to it, saying no is perfectly healthy at points.

5. Talk to Another Parent of a Deaf Child

There is nothing that can replace simply feeling validated and understood. In our case, it’s always helpful to talk to another hearing parent of a deaf child with cochlear implants because they are walking the same path. Even if they don’t have a solution to offer, they provide solidarity and support. Knowing that another person is experiencing the same difficulties and emotions as they watch their own child develop always makes me feel less alone. Not only that, but it’s reassuring to know that Cooper will also have people to lean on as he grows up. Making those connections with other families on the same road is vital.

All in all, it’s hard to be a parent of a child who isn’t “typical.” It’s impossible to avoid comparison, which is why learning to cope with it and redirect your thinking is critical. At the end of the day, what matters is that you are doing everything in your power to allow your deaf child to thrive and progress.

/ By sliveroix / Featured/ 0 Comments

Deaf photographers around the world

While spoken and sign languages create foreign barriers between cultures, the language of photography is universal.

Here are a few deaf photographers are using that language to articulate a story through their lens.

Bruno Braquehais

Bruno Braquehais was born in Dieppe, France in 1823. Although records don’t state how he lost his hearing, Braquehais was deaf from a young age. When he was nine years old, he started at the Royal Institute of the Deaf and Mute in Paris. He later found work as a lithographer.

Braquehais’ connection with his father-in-law, who was a daguerrotypist, motivated his career shift into photography. Daguerrotype was the first photographic process. Braquehais began producing artistic photographs with nude subjects. These were hugely successful and used as a study aid by painters. He began selling his work. He also inherited his father-in-law’s daguerreotype portrait studio after his death, which he continued to run.

In 1871, he assembled an album of 109 photographs documenting the events played out during the Paris Commune, a three-month long mutiny against the French government. Other photographers documented the aftermath of the event. Braquehais was there during the uproar, making sure the historical revolt was recorded. Because of this, he is considered a photojournalism pioneer.
Ultimately, he was imprisoned for fraud. He died in 1875, a short time after his release.

Clare Cassidy

Based in California, Clare Cassidy‘s passion for photography started as a little girl. She got lost in the pages of National Geographic and fantasized about when she could take such photos. Born deaf, she communicates using ASL. She has an identical twin sister who is also deaf. Her three sons are also deaf.

After college, Cassidy minored in photojournalism, which she excelled in. She graduated with a Masters in Secondary Education. She currently teaches visual journalism while running her photography business on the side.

Cassidy has been outspoken in her deaf advocacy on social media and is known for using her photography projects to raise awareness. Her project “Roar from the heart,” inspired by her feelings of devastation after the 2016 U.S. election, donated all profits raised to the Deaf Women of Color organization.

As Cassidy writes on her website, “My being deaf actually gives me the advantage to have a better eye when taking photos. I am not distracted by noises and am more attuned to body languages. Hence, my subjects’ personalities are genuinely portrayed in their photos and real moments in between the nothing are captured.”

“My being deaf actually gives me the advantage to have a better eye when taking photos.”

Her content relies on capturing humanity in its natural state over posed shots. Her extensive gallery involves a lot of maternity, birth and newborn material. However, she often steps into other areas, such as lifestyle and weddings.

She also works for Finding Meraki, an online platform that offers captioned photography workshops by deaf teachers with years of experience. Cassidy offers four separate classes. They include teaching how to use photography as a way to deliver emotive storytelling.

Jaime Del Pizzo

Jaime Del Pizzo was raised just outside of Philadelphia. She has bilateral, severe-to-profound hearing loss and wears Phonak Naida hearing aids.

She studied film production and communications in New Hampshire, where she was given the opportunity to spend a semester in New Zealand. Since then, she has spent time in Wyoming where she worked on a ranch and saved up for her Canon camera. With it, she journeyed through Puerto Rico, Colorado, and Alaska, snapping all the way and and honing her craft. She then settled in Bellingham, went freelance and started her own website. A range of photography services is offered. She recently entered a creative collaboration with another photographer and started Higher Ground Visuals. It’s a content creation business that offers services in photography, videography, and graphic design.

An avid adventurer and self-proclaimed nomad, Del Pizzo’s love for the wilder side of life is reflected in her photography. She produces high quality prints of snowy mountain peaks and incredible night shoots where she captures the bright lights of the Milky Way, an act she describes as “connecting her soul to the universe.”

The photographs she posts on Instagram are often accompanied by descriptive language that beautifully encapsulate the deaf experience. When addressing the unrealistic beauty standards that society often holds us to, she had this to say: “This is something that drives me in my work. I feel that in a sense, I hold this profound power or responsibility to reverse what society is telling people and really, truly show people how beautiful they are, inside and out. I really strive to use this medium to try and smush a snippet of the energy & the soul of a human into a 2D representation that is just buuuuursting at the seams of this mere rectangle.”

Del Pizzo also shares the difficulties that arise as a deaf person living an active life and the barriers she faces. In a blog post a couple of years ago, she said because of her deafness she gets to see the world in a way that most won’t experience.

/ By sliveroix / Featured/ 0 Comments

Phone captioning apps for people with hearing loss

Having a smartphone has always been a bit ironic for those of us with hearing loss. We tend to use it for everything except making actual phone calls. But now there are phone captioning apps that allow us to make and receive phone calls.

Phone captioning apps for people with hearing loss

Olelo

The newest player on the market is Olelo. Olelo is the Hawaiian word for “language,” or “to speak.”

“We think [the name is] a nice fit for our service, and is a beautiful sounding word, and is also cool because it’s a palindrome,” says Erik Strand, founder and CEO of MachineGenius, the company that developed Olelo.

MachineGenius was founded in January 2017 with the express purpose of bringing a modern approach to captioned calls to the Internet Protocol Telephone Service (IP CTS) program. Strand and co-founder Tony Garcia (CTO) have deep experience in both large-scale automated speech recognition (ASR) and efficient, scalable mobile app development and delivery. The Olelo Captioned Calls app is their only product.

In May 2020, MachineGenius became the first “ASR-only” IP CTS provider to be certified by the FCC. Olelo was officially launched in August 2020, and has had over 10,000 installs. A FCC study assessed Olelo and found that it had a lower/better Word Error Rate (WER) and caption delay than other providers.

Olelo loves user feedback and has already incorporated changes, such as displaying caller ID for incoming calls. Not everyone likes being able to see both sides of the conversation in the captions, so this will be an available option soon. There have also been reports that Olelo censors curse words; this will also become an optional setting. To share ideas for improvement or any thoughts about the app, email oleloteam@machinegenius.com.

InnoCaption

Probably the most well-known of the phone captioning apps is InnoCaption, which was launched in July 2016. At the time, it was the only captioned phone service provider to offer a mobile app-based service across both iOS and Android devices. A record year was had in 2020, with 65 percent growth in active users.

What makes InnoCaption stand out is that it is the only mobile app that offers users a choice between real time captioning through live stenographers and ASR software. InnoCaption Marketing Director Matt Goncalves says that ASR is still a fairly new technology when it comes to captioned phone services. InnoCaption only began offering fully automated captions as a feature in early 2019. The company has seen a gradual adoption among their users.

“Currently, a majority of our calls are still captioned by live stenographers, but we are seeing more and more users try ASR, especially after we implemented the mid-call switching feature, which lets users switch between caption modes even during calls,” Goncalves says.

Live stenographer and ASR captioning modes each have different strengths and weaknesses, which are discussed in an InnoCaption blog post.

A new version of the iOS mobile app was released in May. It has a completely redesigned user interface with numerous features added to the app and a more modern look, Goncalves says. All the new features were added based on user feedback. They include light/dark modes and visual voicemail. The update was made available for Android devices a couple of weeks ago.

Phonak myCall-to-Text

Did you know that Phonak also has a phone captioning app called myCall-to-Text? It has live transcription in more than 80 languages. The app works optimally with Phonak Marvel hearing aids. Because Phonak is International, the app is available not just in the U.S., but Canada, UK, and Germany app stores.

Read more: Speech-to-text apps for the deaf community

Other Phone Captioning Apps

There are three other phone captioning apps on the market:

/ By sliveroix / Featured/ 0 Comments

Interview with Tamika Catchings

Tamika Catchings has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Not only is she the first women’s player from the University of Tennessee to achieve this high honor, she is the first with hearing loss.

Impressive Career

Tamika Catchings has called her moderate to severe hearing loss her “superpower.” It certainly didn’t hinder her career, which includes winning the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Defensive Player of the Year Award five times in her 15 seasons with the Indiana Fever and four Olympic gold medals. She’s garnished lots of other awards and acclaim, and she still holds the league’s career record for steals. A particular distinction she can be proud of is being the WNBA’s only player to spend an entire career of 16 or more seasons with the same franchise.

The daughter of former NBA player Harvey Catchings retired after the 2016 season. She now serves as director of player programs and franchise development with Pacers Sports & Entertainment. Catchings also operates the Tea’s Me Café on the north side of downtown Indianapolis, and serves as an ambassador with the NBA and WNBA. Additionally, she serves on a developmental committee with USA Basketball and as an SEC ESPN Women’s Basketball Analyst.

A cause close to her heart is the Catch the Stars Foundation, which she founded in 2004. It provides basketball camps, fitness clinics, mentoring, and literacy programs for underprivileged children to help them become successful in sports and academics.

Hall of Fame Speech

“Basketball chose me,” she said in her Hall of Fame speech. “An awkward, lanky, introverted tomboy born with a hearing disability, a speech impediment, and a will to overcome obstacles, dream big, and to change the world.”

Catchings also passed on what she learned from her parents.

“We all have dreams and goals. And whether you’re young or old, born with a disability or have been told of the things you can’t accomplish, tonight I share the same words that my parents shared with me, with a twist. If anyone can do it, you can. Shoot for the stars, work hard, and catch your dream.”

Read more: Notable deaf athletes you should know about

Hearing Loss

It wasn’t until Catchings was three years old that her parents realized she had a hearing loss. Her dad was behind her at a playground, calling her name, when he noticed she didn’t react at all. Her older brother was diagnosed with a hearing loss a few years earlier. After this incident, her parents got her hearing tested and discovered she had been born with a hearing loss. Soon after her diagnosis, she was fitted with hearing aids.

Unfortunately, the family moved around a lot. Because of this and other differences – of which hearing loss was just one – Catchings was bullied in school. One day in third grade, out of frustration, she threw her hearing aids into a tall field of grass. After looking unsuccessfully for them, Catchings’ mother told her they couldn’t afford to buy new ones and she had to learn to live without them. That same year, however, she started playing organized basketball. It wasn’t until she was playing basketball in college that she realized she needed hearing aids. Hearing Like Me had a chance to ask her about this and more.

Interview with Tamika Catchings

HLM: What is the cause of your hearing loss, if known?

Tamika: We don’t know. Outside of my brother and I, no one else in our family has a hearing loss.

HLM: What has it been like having a sibling with hearing loss?

Tamika: Kenyon and I have something in common, so it’s been great being able to share some of our challenges together.

HLM: What was your hearing journey after diagnosis?

Tamika: I received hearing aids as early as I can remember. We were always in mainstream schools. My mom and dad made sure that we were involved and engaged in a lot of different things.

HLM: You didn’t accept your hearing loss until freshman year of college. How did you feel about it prior to that, and what changed?

Tamika: I threw out my hearing aids for a period of time because of the bullying in my early years. After a conversation I had with my college coach, Pat Summitt, about my hearing, she encouraged me to wear them and told me I would one day have a story to tell about this.

HLM: When did you and/or your dad realize you took after him and were a skilled basketball player?

Tamika: We played a lot of sports growing up, so I think it was later. I made a goal my seventh grade year of one day playing in the NBA. Working with my dad at that point, I know we all started realizing my drive and dedication to the game.

HLM: How did your hearing loss affect your playing – both positively and negatively?

Tamika: I think that my hearing loss made me a better player. It forced me to develop in other areas and become more observant. The obvious part of it would be not hearing the plays and having to adjust. But all in all, I think it made me a better player.

“I think that my hearing loss made me a better player.”

HLM: What was it like playing overseas during the WNBA offseason as someone with hearing loss?

Tamika: I think the hardest part of playing overseas was trying to understand not just another language, but our translator with their accents. I enjoyed being engulfed in a different culture.

HLM: How have your teammates and coaches reacted to your hearing loss?

Tamika: Because I am comfortable with myself, there are times we just laugh and joke about it. If I miss something, or if they sense I missed something, they really try to help me out.

HLM: What accommodations, if any, have you requested during your career?

Tamika: I haven’t had any accommodations. I just try to make sure that I’m always positioned right in front to be able to catch all of the information in the huddles.

HLM: What are some standout moments from your career?

Tamika: Winning the 2012 WNBA Championship will always be at the forefront for me because of how special Indianapolis is and what the city has meant to me since being drafted.

HLM: What was it like being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame?

Tamika: Amazing! Being able to share in the moment with my hubby (Parnell) and all of our family was absolutely magical.

HLM: What do you want people with hearing loss to know?

Tamika: Our hearing loss does NOT define who we are or the level of success we can have. I look at my hearing loss as a superpower and am so grateful that God chose me to share my journey. Anything we dream, we can have WITH hard work and a commitment to accomplish our goals.

/ By sliveroix / Featured/ 0 Comments

Managing hearing loss and mental health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. To bring awareness to this issue, we’re addressing the research behind hearing loss and mental health.

As someone with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, depression, and anxiety, it’s sometimes hard to tell which came first. However, I have learned some good ways to cope.

Read more: Study: The impact of hearing loss on mental health

Why Hearing Loss Affects Your Mental Health

The first step in learning to juggle hearing loss and mental health is understanding how the two connect. There have been a few scientific studies into hearing loss and depression, and hearing loss and dementia.

Experts believe the extra cognitive load caused by your brain working harder to hear could cause mental health problems in people with hearing loss, but there are no clear causes yet. The isolation and difficulty communicating that can be part of hearing loss can also affect mental health.

Read more: How depression and hearing loss are connected

Managing Your Hearing Loss

Managing your hearing loss is an important step in managing your mental health. Unaided hearing loss can create more cognitive strain, putting individuals at higher risk of mental health problems.

Read more: Who is impacted by hearing loss and dementia?

However, hearing loss is notoriously difficult to accept. I struggled with my hearing loss for years before I booked a hearing test and started dealing with it. I got my diagnosis when I was 26-years-old, but I’d struggled for at least a decade beforehand. When I finally reached out for help, I got such a confidence boost, partly through having better hearing with hearing aids and partly through accepting my hearing loss instead of avoiding it. Just admitting it felt like a load off my shoulders.

“When I finally reached out for help, I got such a confidence boost…”

Hearing loss can cause low self esteem, isolation, and anxiety. Taking good care of your hearing loss and supporting your communication needs where you can are excellent ways to overcome some of these issues.

The first step is usually a visit to a primary care physician or getting a hearing test from an audiologist or ENT. Hearing tests are easy and don’t cause discomfort or pain in any way. After this, you can discuss your results with an audiologist and decide what to do next. For lots of people, hearing aids might help, but they aren’t your only option. Simply becoming aware of your hearing loss can help your mental health a great deal.

Read more: Hearing test

Improving Your Mental Health with Socialization and Communication

Mental health problems are always easier to manage with support or at least an active social life. If you find in person socializing difficult, try reaching out online. This can be a great place to start if you’re unsure of social situations. Try joining an online book group, like one of the hundreds on Goodreads. With a book club, you’re automatically given something to discuss, a place to start a conversation.

The isolation that comes with hearing loss doesn’t have to be debilitating. There are many ways to ease loneliness, such as social media, friendship apps, or local groups. Why not check out a hearing loss support group? Some meet in person, some meet online, and there are plenty of forums too. If you’re uncomfortable discussing your hearing loss, an off-topic group or forum can be the best place to start.

It can also be helpful to discuss your mental health with your existing social circle. Reach out to friends, family members, or even your healthcare provider to share some of your feelings about mental health. It’s beneficial for you to discuss how your hearing loss makes you feel too. If you’re not comfortable doing this with anyone you know, try a professional or a support forum.

Managing Your Mental Health

If you’re already dealing with your hearing loss, you’ll still need to manage your mental health itself. One of the best ways to do this is to create a routine that includes exercise and healthy eating. You can also lift your mood and manage stress and anxiety by getting regular exercise. Making sure you get out of the house is crucial. The more you get out, the better you learn to handle your hearing loss.

If in doubt, book an appointment with your primary care physician, and discuss your thoughts with them. It’s essential to get things appropriately assessed and access treatment if need be. If you’re finding that your hearing loss causes your mental health problems, be sure to mention this to your doctor. There are even therapist who are specially equipped to handle psychological issues connected to hearing loss.

In general, take care of yourself, and don’t forget that you aren’t alone. Lots of us have been through similar experiences. Don’t be afraid to reach out!