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My Hearing Loss and Me: We Get Along Most of the Time

by John F. Anderson, Jr.

44 pages; Saddle stitched; catalogue #03-0677; ISBN 1-4120-0308-3; US$24.00, C$27.50, EUR20.00, £14.00

What are the experiences of students with hearing loss attending regular schools? This book tells a story of a fictional young student through pictures and his experiences using a cochlear implant.

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about the book      about the author and illustrator      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book It is very difficult for teachers and parents to understand the psychosocial effects of hearing loss on young children. This book can help all of us better understand the world from the point of view of a child with a hearing loss. This is a story about a young boy who has a cochlear implant. He attends a mainstream school and is the only child in his family with a hearing loss. This book describes his experiences in life highlighting how his hearing loss affects those experiences. In almost all the situations described in this book, the young boy, Jack, is involved in a conversation with someone. Conversations with his parents, his brothers, his speech language therapists, his playmates, and others are all presented in this book. Sometimes the conversations are not successful immediately. But all the conversations eventually succeed because Jack, the main character, receives help from someone. Sometimes Jack is able to help himself. Other times, he receives some support and encouragement from his parents to help get through a communication breakdown that occurred in some way. In this story, Jack uses a cochlear implant. The reader will have to decide how well he thinks Jack seems to be doing with the cochlear implant. The author's intent is not to evaluate the success or failure of the cochlear implant. Rather, the author is trying to focus on how well Jack is able to do in a world where everyone else around Jack has normal hearing. It is the author's belief that Jack does quite well in this world. It is the author's belief that conversations about a child's experiences having a hearing loss in mainstream schools is vital to the child's feeling of belonging to this world. These experiences are not limited to the challenges that the child might have to overcome. It also includes the experiences where the child did well and feels happy about it. It is the author's hope that this book helps you have the conversations that you would like to have with those who are a part of your life.

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About the Author and Illustrator John Anderson was born with normal hearing. At the age of three, he began to lose his hearing and was diagnosed as having a moderate inner ear loss. The etiology of the hearing loss was unknown. At the age of 4, he began to wear a body worn hearing aid with amplification in his right ear. Later, it was found that he had lost more hearing and the nature of the loss was determined to be progressive. While attending mainstream schools, he received weekly speech therapy during his elementary school years. He did not have access to FM systems nor did he use interpreters of any kind. He earned his high school diploma in 1967 and went on to college earning a bachelor degree in data processing in 1971. He went on to earn his masters in business administration in 1973 and began a career in computer programming. When he was in his early 30Ős, he lost the remainder of his hearing. At the age of 35, he received a cochlear implant and has been using it successfully for the last 19 years. After regaining some of his hearing through the cochlear implant, he began to think about a career change to the field of counseling. He did make that change, earning a masters degree in counseling psychology in 1997, and has worked for the last six years as an adjustment counselor for the Mainstream Center at Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton MA, where he works with children with hearing loss who attend public schools. William Bushell is an artist and illustrator living and working in Victoria, BC, on Canada's west coast. He has illustrated and designed books for several authors internationally.

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Excerpts

Preface to the First Edition

I grew up with a hearing loss while attending regular schools. The only service that I had was speech and language therapy with a focus on improving my speech and speech reading skills. I later lost all my hearing as a young man and lived completely without sound for three years. I've been using a cochlear implant since 1985. It's been a wonderful experience to have some hearing again. I now work as an adjustment counselor for the Mainstream Center at Clarke School for the Deaf. The focus of my work is to help students in regular schools figure out how to make the many relationships they have at school work better for them.

This book is about relationships and is intended to help students identify some of the challenges they may face in communicating. No student that I know has all the challenges this young boy has. My hope for this book is that it encourages conversation about hearing loss between the reader and an adult in a way that feels safe. It is my belief that conversation about experiences is crucial to a child who is learning to communicate with people who have normal hearing. Everyone's personal experience with hearing loss is different. The situations described in this book are intended as a way to begin having those conversations.

Thank you for your interest in this book. I'd like to hear what you think of it. You can e-mail me at janderson@clarkeschool.org

- John F. Anderson, Jr.

Dinner time. We're all sitting together. I'm eating while my brother, Sam, is talking to my mom. My oldest brother, Dan, is talking to my dad. I'm not sure which conversation to try to follow. I know that all I have to do to find out what people are saying is, "Excuse me, can you tell me what you're talking about?" When I do that, someone tells me and I feel better. Sometimes my mom and dad smile and check on me by saying, "Are you following this discussion OK?" Sometimes I say yes. Sometimes I say no. It's hard. Sometimes one of my brothers will ask me questions and that makes me feel good, but I wish they would talk a little slower.

Here I am getting ready for bed. I did watch some TV after I did my homework. I watched my favorite adventure-man cartoon show. The show has closed captions which are really neat. I can read what the cartoon characters are saying. This helps me a lot because I can't lip read those cartoon characters very well.

My mom was just here to say good night. At the end of each day she asks me what it was like to hear. Today, I said OK. But there are other days when I feel like I had more trouble understanding what people were saying and I tell my mom. When we talk about it, I always feel better. And no matter what happens during my day, she always gives me a big hug and tells me she loves me very much. I always tell her I love her too. Good night!

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Catalogue Information