{"id":90,"date":"2010-03-17T21:53:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T20:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/2010\/03\/17\/mummy-muuuuuummy\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T21:57:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T20:57:17","slug":"mummy-muuuuuummy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/2010\/03\/17\/mummy-muuuuuummy\/","title":{"rendered":"Mummy? Muuuuuummy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may know that I have two little girls. Something has been on my mind an awful lot lately, and that\u2019s been not just my role as a Mum, but as a deaf Mum.<\/p>\n

My oldest is almost four. She\u2019s practically four, she has the speech, understanding and mobility of a four old, so she may as well be four so from this point on will be known as the \u201cfour year old\u201d. My youngest is one. She is very much the baby of the family, still keeping in her little baby ways and has very little speech but can sign \u201cDuck\u201d with pride and has a wicked smile. She only turned one in January and it\u2019s almost her month anniversary, so she\u2019ll be known as the \u201c14 month old\u201d.<\/p>\n

My four year old, is the funniest little thing. She comes out with the cutest of remarks and very cleverly put together sentences, for a four year old. This evening, she declared that when she\u2019s bigger and older, she is going to be a princess and her little sister could be the fairy. I asked her how old was old, and she announced \u201cTwenty\u201d. You can only laugh can\u2019t you? \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

As much as I absolutely adore my children, I find them quite hard work at times, like any parent. However, additionally to the usual parenting woes, I have found that as my four year old gets very frustrated when I can\u2019t understand things she\u2019s said. At first I thought she was picking up reactions from others to me, so using a tone of impatience in her voice when having to repeat things time and time again that perhaps she\u2019d heard someone else use. But then I realised that there are hardly any situations when people are like that with me on a regular basis when she\u2019s around. My husband doesn\u2019t, my parents and my sister certainly don\u2019t. The only time I can really think of, is when I\u2019m out shopping, or perhaps with someone who doesn\u2019t know me very well. Some people do it without thinking, if they\u2019re having a bad day, others do it because of a lack of awareness or plain ignorance. In fact, the tone of impatience makes me fluster and I struggle even more to pick up what is being said. I can\u2019t actually hear the tone particularly well with the hearing aid, but I hear the tone nonetheless through lip-reading and facial expressions.<\/p>\n

I think, it\u2019s therefore become a bit of a natural thing to do for her as she\u2019s now at a stage of development to realise just how different I can be to other people. She doesn\u2019t have to repeat what she\u2019s saying all the time to other people, and she knows how much easier that is. My guilt involved in this is as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cMummy, can I have a drink please?\u201d She\u2019ll ask very nicely.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, what did you say?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan I have a drink?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPardon?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cDrink! I want one!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be rude, where are your manners?\u201d<\/p>\n

And I wonder why she gets annoyed with me. I struggle to remember that she\u2019s only four, she is normally a lovely polite little girl, but she struggles to get my attention sometimes, and I sometimes have told her off for something that wouldn\u2019t have been necessary had I heard her the first time.<\/p>\n

Mother\u2019s guilt is such a terrible thing. I\u2019ve mentioned it before, in an early post when I first started this blog (here<\/a>) and it still haunts me. I wish I had been more consistent with her signing, if she had signed to me in the first instance, I\u2019d have got it right away. But I suppose I got lazy. She can sign, she knows many words and can ask for a drink, or to watch the telly, or to play in the garden beautifully \u2013 but she doesn\u2019t do it automatically. Only if I ask her to. I need to change this, otherwise she\u2019ll get more and more frustrated with me.<\/p>\n

I do explain to her by the way, the implications of me not being able to hear. She does understand, but she\u2019s only four after all. She\u2019s already got quite a lot of responsibility on her shoulders to tell me if the baby is crying, or if there was a knock at the door. She surprises me sometimes, with her mature head in the way she\u2019s realised that she needed to tell me something I might not have heard. <\/p>\n

I hate that I miss out on the best conversations. My friend e mailed me one night after dropping my daughter home one evening after we\u2019d been to a show and I had gone on to college afterwards. She told me what her daughter, the same age as my four year old and mine had been discussing all the way home. How I loved to hear about it, the best conversations with children, can be in the car. Mine consist of:<\/p>\n

\u201cOooh, did you see that tractor?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d She\u2019ll say excitedly, and then she\u2019ll say something else\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cSorry darling, I\u2019m driving at the moment so can\u2019t see what you\u2019re saying\u2026 tell me when we\u2019ve stopped\u201d<\/p>\n

And then that\u2019s it and the car returns to the sound of nothing \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got to share with you the e mail that my friend sent me. I really felt I was there after reading it, I felt I hadn\u2019t missed out on it quite so much. But I was sad, that if it had been me driving, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to share the same conversation with my friend.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll make you smile though, I can guarantee that, aren\u2019t four year olds amazing? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\n

A – Sometimes I go to see my Daddy at his work
I – Me too, I visit Uncle Greggy there too but not very often.
A – I haven’t been to your Daddy’s work.
I – I haven’t been to your Daddy’s work either.
A – No I haven’t either…oooooooh MACDONALDS! I can see the ‘M’!
I -  I like MacDonalds, it’s yellow.
A – Me too, Old Macdonald had a farm, e i e i ohhhhhhhh!
I joins in.
A – I like Kinder eggs too.
I – What’s a Kinder eggs?
A – They have yummy chocolate and toys inside them.
I – I like Happy Meal toys, they’re Scooby Doo
A – I like being happy. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Writing this blog post has been more about me letting off a bit of steam, but it also has helped me realise what I need to do. That is to sign more often with my children. OK, we won\u2019t be able to have a conversation in the car, or walk and talk easily, but perhaps the friction that is sometimes caused by my inability to catch what she\u2019s saying will be eased. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s a stunner you know, and the 14 month old. I\u2019m so lucky. I\u2019ll share a picture of my four year old signing something to me tonight, can you work out what she\u2019s saying?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A quick CI update is that I turned up last week at my appointment only to find that there had been a mix up with dates on my part and actually, my appointment had been the week before. The next appointment they had was 1st April, so I\u2019ll update after then.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, enjoy your children and cherish every word they say. They are special x<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may know that I have two little girls. Something has been on my mind an awful lot lately, and that\u2019s been not just my role as a Mum, but as a deaf Mum. My oldest is almost four. She\u2019s practically four, she has the speech, understanding and mobility of a four old, so she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thedeafone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}