My youngest son has a moderate-severe hearing loss in one ear, but has only a mild loss in the other ear. He is 7 years old. I thought I would share a story in as close to his own words as I can remember.
"Mum, I hate it when we play Chinese Whispers and Karen (his teacher) does not tell me we are going to play it first."
"Why?"
"''Cos I might be sitting in the wrong spot."
"Wrong spot?"
"Yeah, this ear is Deaf you know!" he says, pointing to his ear, like this information would be completely new to me, "and I need the whispering to be in my other ear or people get angry with me for spoiling the game."
"What are you going to do about it?"
After some time he states, "I know. I am going to tell Karen to go this way around (motioning in a circle so that the whispers will be in his good ear) and not this way."
Given the chance, children are great at coming up with solutions to their hearing difficulties. I like to encourage both my children to come up with these themselves (sometimes with a little help), and try and talk to people (in this case the teacher) about the trouble they are having.
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18-Feb-2022 8:00 AM (AEST)