Help about deafness/hearing aids in school etc?

i had custody of a boy with hearing loss, the hearing aids helped him a lot. he became deaf because his mother never had his ear infections treated as an infant, resulting in scar tissue that built up over old scar tissue, he was prone to infections, and was not treated in time, so he became deaf.
my mother also has hearing loss due to a bone in her ear, she had to have it replaced with a prosthetic bone to prevent her hearing loss.
if someone is totally deaf then cochlear implants may work, depends on the person. most deaf do not get them because you can not filter the volume. hearing aids do not work if you are completely deaf, there has to be some hearing in order for them to work.
the boy that lived with me, his school provided hearing aids for him, or a special listening device with head phones like those whisper 2000’s that pick up the faintest noise. when he was younger, he learned how to read lips through deaf services, sign is taught from an early age, i cant imagine a father telling his son, he is not allowed to learn to talk, and ASL is a most primary way of a deaf person learning to speak, so you may want to rethink that one, however, a lot of parents are opposed to the cochlear implants.
in school, the boy i had, had an IEP (individualized education plan) so, he sat up front in regular classes, and when he took tests, they were tailored to what he could read and learn while he was in class. you have to remember that the deaf community speak differently, and have a hard time writing complete sentences, since, sign language is not considered complete sentences in the listening world, they also speak choppy, because its hard to teach discrepancies….they greet someone “nice me meet you” we greet “nice to meet you” they use their hand gestures to assimilate one person going “to” another. in school the boy had an aid that went to class with him, that took notes for him. he also relied heavily on reading lips, since he wanted to be considered “normal” and fit in with other kids, but it only made him louder when he spoke, and it came off pretty obnoxious, i just couldn’t make him wear his hearing aids to save my life. he missed out a lot on what people said, especially if they weren’t facing him. he would pretend to understand, but you could tell he couldn’t at times, and was too embarrassed to ask someone to repeat something.

hope this helped.

Congrats for taking on this project!!
If you think about how everyone with glasses have varying degrees of sight, then you can understand that having a hearing impairment or being Deaf is similar-everyone is ddifferent It depends on the individual. Then again it depends on the parents: different parents may or may not have strong feelings about the methods used to teach their child dependednt on their own exposure to hearing impairment. Some will try anything to make ttheirchild hear, others are content that they are who they are and use whatever mode of communication they want.

You could get a lot form the following movies, as they touch on the many ccontroversial subjects you may want to include.

old, but a Classic : “Children of a Lesser God”

“Sound and Fury”

“Miracle Worker” also a classic.

(I’ve been a teacher of the Deaf for 30 years and still watch the movies)

Just as each child learns differently, so true is what is best for one may not be best for the other. No matter what view you take- you will find a lot of info. google some of these topics you pose.
meningitis can effect more than just hearing as it is an infection covering the film that covers the brain. Some kids also have balance issues or other motor-intergration issues. At one point there were some drugs given to the baby to save its life which wiped out the hearing. You’re a parent and your baby might die, do you even hear the words the doctor says when he informs the parents that one side effect is deafness?
Then there is genetic deafness: families with deafness. There tends to be more acceptence becaue Uncle Joe was deaf and he did just fime. Or the last three generations in my family had deafness and they all did just fime attititute. I have had families where mom, dad and all the grandparents signed ASL (american sign language) Deaf was normal for them. Most hearing people can’t even fathom that concept. Hearing people, except CODAS, (children of deaf adults)
can’t enven grasp that idea!
The oralist vs ASL method war is still in full swing, as it was 50 years ago. Now the new weapon is cochlear implants. Should you have surgery to “fix” the deafness and make the kid hearing or accept the deafness and sign to them? Most Deaf parents with Deaf kids go the ASL route..and boy the kids I have seen were all testing in the gifted range…
A lot old CIs from years ago don’t work any more and now technology offers 22 channels…I have seen a lot of cochlear kids….some when the CI calcilfied and the CI stopped working and some where the kid was MIMR or LD and still struggled to learn. And some where the parent never took the kid to speech therapy so the kid didn’t learn to use it. And some whose parents worked so hard and the kid’s speech is perfect and some who never wear the CI because the kids teased him and some whose battery died and they didn’t have a back up so their parents came and picked them up from school each time and they missed the rest of the day and another wo uses sign and still wears a CI and another who wears a CI and a hearing aid and another wheere he signed waears a CI and cued speech, another who wears a CI and speaks Spanish at home ASL/English at school..take your pick …you can have a whole series of books on each topic!!!!
Best of luck and keep us posted!!