Do You Hear What I Hear?

Brianna Dreger 

Endlessly Developing Hearing

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in a world where sounds are faint or living in absolute silence? Imagine the radio is your entire world of sounds, but then it stopped working. When it’s off, what do you hear? Nothing right? That is only when the person with hearing loss is profoundly (completely) deaf. Then you have three choices: to live in a Deaf community, to get cochlear implants and still participate in the Deaf community, or live in the hearing world in its entirety. The third choice is where I stand now.

Growing up, a person with hearing loss develops a stronger sense of hearing throughout time, but only slowly. A speech therapist helps a child practice her speech sounds and once she masters that sound alone, she puts them into words.

“Can you say, backpack?” The speech therapist spoke.

“Backback,” the child attempted to repeat.

“Backpack,”

“Packpack,”

At first speech sounds are one of the greatest obstacles to get over; it really depends on how a person hears. With practice and continuing to develop hearing, the speech will eventually become clearer. But that is only just the beginning of a challenge that a child will go through with cochlear implants/hearing aids.

All The Overlapping Sound In The World

Technologies that help a person hear are only made for just that, to hear. For someone who doesn’t have a strong development through hearing will find noises overwhelming. Sounds come to the equipment from all over the place and you cannot pinpoint where the sounds are coming from.