VRS Interpreters

Yet again today a VRS (video relay service) interpreter botched a call with my MIL. This happens more often than not. Often in small ways that aren’t particularly problematic. But more than a few times, they have botched more significant details. Today’s substantial interpreting mistake? My MIL was calling me to say she was sick with diarrhea and cannot watch the girls. But I only figured that out after a few texts with my SIL. Because, you see, the interpreter said that MIL wasn’t feeling well after surgery and needed to rest. My only assumption is that the interpreter somehow confused “diarrhea” and “surgery”…which, for those of you unfamiliar, are not particularly similar at all (only same motion, different handshapes).

The only reason I was pretty sure that the interpreter was incorrect is because we are in very regular contact with my MIL and SIL since they help watch the girls. So I was pretty sure that MIL hadn’t had any surgery I hadn’t heard about. If she was not someone who I was in regular contact with, I’d have had no idea about the misinterpretation.

As I said, this isn’t the first time this has happened. It has happened in other calls with my MIL. It has also happened in a call for Jessi’s IEP meeting…with 2 different interpreters. The first interpreter was making so many mistakes, that we had to ask for a new one. Thankfully, I had a direct video line to the Deaf woman who was helping us out as our advocate so that I could tell that the interpreter was incorrectly interpreting what our advocate was saying.

Don’t get me wrong…I get it. Interpreting is a tough job. No one will be 100%. (It’s one of the main reasons I have no desire to get into the field.) And it’s made even harder as a video interpreter who doesn’t have as much context as an in-person interpreter might. So I understand some degree of minor mistakes. But when the mistakes are so numerous as they were for Jessi’s IEP meeting or so serious so as to confuse diarrhea and surgery…come on!!

VRS companies need to be hiring better quality interpreters. Deaf callers deserve better quality access in their phone calls, personal and professional.

Hearing people talking to Deaf people through VRS, keep this in mind. Here’s 3 major tips:

Make sure you confirm important information, especially if something sounds weird…just to make sure interpreters aren’t misinterpreting things. I have caught numerous errors by repeating back details of the conversation to confirm (ex: “ok, so I’ll pick the girls up at 4 at your house?”) or even straight up asking if something was interpreted right.
If you’re about to begin on a more involved or more important conversation than simple social calls, you may find it highly beneficial to give a quick summary of context or backstory for the interpreter. Just so they know. Having some idea of the context will definitely improve your chances for a more accurate interpretation.
If you get a particularly awful interpreter, one who makes more than minor understandable mistakes, please make a complaint about them to their VRS company. It’ll only change if the companies get complaints.

Parents: Get Those Hands Up

Infographic: Deaf Children are at High Risk of language deprivation

We were at an event for a local children’s D/HH program tonight. While the event wasn’t targeted at signing families, all of the families there said they sign with their children. Guess how many signing hands I saw at the event today? I saw one parent signing a couple of single words from the game they were playing. That’s it besides myself, my 2 girls, the Deaf staff member, and the interpreter that was there. Over the course of 2.5 hours. Besides Jessie, the other Deaf kids were 3, a baby (I give those parents a pass because this was all very new to them), and the other Deaf kids there were about 7-10 yrs old.

Jessi’s school had a restaurant fundraiser the other day and I saw the same thing with the few families there. Signing a couple of words here and there, but not even a full sentence, much less a full conversation. And all of the kids were at least 4 years old. I and one staff member were the only ones really signing.

Please parents, get those hands up and start signing. Your kids need you. I get that learning a language is hard. And I gave the moms of Jessi’s peers a pass when the kids were all babies because it’s tough to pick up a whole new language and that takes time. But those babies are now 4-5 years old. I’m not seeing much improvement in the parents signing skills or frequency with which they sign with their kids. And I see the husbands hardly knowing a handful of signs, and the grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, etc knowing virtually nothing.

I know this isn’t unusual. My own parents have only learned some and my siblings virtually nothing.

But just because it’s common, doesn’t make it OK. Our kids need better from their parents. I get that most parents don’t know any sign when their Deaf child is born. I get that learning a language is hard. But this is your KID we’re talking about. After 4ish years, you should be developing a decent degree of conversational fluency. And sure, your kid is learning English, but spoken language will never be easy, clear, or even always accurate for any D/HH person under the best circumstances. By only minimally signing, you are depriving your child of having truly strong and easy communication with you. You’re slowing their language acquisition. You’re limiting their everyday incidental learning opportunities, which can add up to huge deficits as they get older. You’re limiting their ability to learn the finer details of how social interactions should work. And more.

Communication is the foundation of a person’s success and the foundation for all their relationships. You can’t have either without solid communication skills. You want a strong relationship with your child? Sign. You want your child to have all opportunities for success available to them? Sign. Parents of D/HH kids who are learning to sign, please…pick those hands up and SIGN. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be slow, and awkward, and halting…but even imperfect signing is better than whatever garbled amount of English your child is able to hear/lip read any day of the week. Even imperfect signing is GOLD to your D/HH signing child.

Oppression from the Professionals

So my daughter had her audiologist appointment today. I went into the appointment fully expecting her audiogram to show a slight regression in her hearing loss. We’ve certainly noticed a decrease in her ability to understand spoken language over the last 8-12 months.

Her previous audiogram from 6 months ago had shown a very slight progression (a 5-10 dB difference in most frequencies) from her previous audiograms, which had been pretty consistent since birth. However the audiologist refused to acknowledge it as a progression. At the time she said that one test isn’t enough to show a regression and that 5-10 dB could be just a margin of error of the test. I didn’t really buy it because that change matched up with our observations at home of her mishearing things a little more often and matches up with the genetic family history of progressive loss. But ok, fine, whatever. I could wait another 6 months for a confirmation.

Then today’s appointment showed a similar regression, actually slightly worse (5 dB) than even 6 months ago in a couple of frequencies. At birth and through her first few years, her lower frequency hearing was normal…now it’s also mild to moderate. Her higher frequencies have moved from mild to moderate to pretty solidly in the moderate range.

And yet, her audiologist is still calling her hearing loss “stable” and refusing to acknowledge a regression. Which, on a practical day to day sense, I don’t really care. I know what I’m seeing at home. We’re already signing with her. Etc. So it doesn’t impact our day to day at all other than me knowing that I need to really focus more on ASL than we have been so far.

Where her refusal to acknowledge a regression becomes a problem is in dealing with our school district. The district isn’t on the same page of us. They are fighting our desire to have her attend a Deaf school. They are fighting us on the importance of ASL for her. They continue to insist on considering the impact of progressive hearing loss an “if” thing rather than the “when” thing it really is. And at this point, I feel confident in saying that “when” has really become a “now” thing. And while we know from family history that the progression isn’t likely to happen super fast, it will happen.

We need to be actively considering progression as a factor during her IEP meetings as a “now” problem, not a “we’ll worry about it IF it happens” problem. But without the audiologist labeling it as a progression, the district won’t take us seriously. They don’t know that even seemingly small changes on an audiogram make a big difference in ability to comprehend speech. The speech “banana” as they call it is in the mild to moderate range. It doesn’t take much hearing loss to really eat away at what portions of speech a person can recognize.

Audiologists like this who refuse to acknowledge such a progression do great harm to their patients. They hinder their parents ability to get them the access and supports that they need and deserve. Which in turn can impact the rest of their lives. No, that’s not a melodramatic statement. Our educational experiences are the foundation for the rest of our lives. It’s where we build our knowledge as well as our sense of self. And those earliest years set the foundation for everything that comes afterward. You fall behind, academically or socially, and it’s really hard to dig yourself out of that hole and repair what it does to your own sense of self.

My husband is a perfect example of this. He still to this day at the age of 40 has struggles that are directly related to not receiving the supports he needed and deserved while in school. Don’t get me wrong, he has a decent job, he’s pretty smart, he knows quite a bit about a lot of stuff. But he also isn’t fluent enough in ASL to feel comfortable with interpreters or in a Deaf social gathering. His self confidence is not what it should be due to the struggles he faced…his depression and anxiety started due to his academic and social struggles in school. He views himself as “not smart” and “antisocial” and “socially awkward” when he is really none of those things, he has just internalized the oppression he faced in school and doesn’t realize that what he sees as personal failings are really a result of being failed by the system. He could have gone a lot farther with his education gotten a better job and he shouldn’t have experienced all the bullying and the social/emotional damage that did to him. But his experiences K-12 have definitely held him back from his full success and it didn’t do anything to prepare him for living life as a deaf adult.

The oppression of DHH folks is baked into the system. It comes at all angles. Too many professionals in the field are too focused on making deaf people to be as hearing like as possible instead of valuing them for what skills they do have. Even from the angle of an audiologist who is refusing to acknowledge the data right in front of her. This is why it’s such a challenge for us parents to fight the system and get our kids the access and rights they deserve.

Smart Choices with Littles and Their Hearing Aids

Handful of colorful ear molds for hearing aids: blue, purple, pink, orange, and clear with colorful glitter.

When my daughter first got her hearing aids, she was only a few months old. As soon as she was able to, she started pulling them out. She’d pull them out all the time and would rarely wear them for very long, if she wore them at all. The only thing she liked was picking out colors for new ear molds.

While this was frustrating to have her constantly pulling out her aids, we accepted that she simply clearly didn’t like her hearing aids for some reason or didn’t feel like she got any benefit from them. We respected her feelings on that front and did not force her hearing aids on her. Which we were able to do because we were also signing with her and raising her to know ASL as well as English (one of many reasons I believe ASL is essential for all D/HH kids, but that’s another post for another time).

I think it is key with little kids and their hearing aids to not force the issue. Far too often, the parents, usually at the misguided instruction of their audiologist, will push and push and push a child to wear their hearing aids during all waking hours and create a power struggle. This stresses the parent out, and it definitely stresses the kid out. Many kids who get locked in such a power struggle with their parents will “lose” their hearing aids many a time over their childhood to avoid having to wear them. My husband likes to tell as story about how he’d throw his aids under his dresser to hide them when he was a kid. My husband eventually reached a point though where he realized the benefits for his aids outweighed the negatives.

Now at 4, especially the last few months, this decision has paid off. She started being more willing to put her hearing aids in for school. Started wearing them longer both in school and then leaving them on longer and longer after school. She now will wear them all day most days. While I would have been fine either way, choosing to use her hearing aids or not, I am happy to see her choosing to wear them as it gives her the most options.

So to every parent out there who is told by your child’s audiologist that if you don’t force your child to wear their aids every waking minute, then they’ll never wear their hearing aids, your audiologist is wrong. Both my husband and my daughter prove it. I know other Deaf folks who have made similar decisions. Each Deaf person, young and old, must make their own decision about if their hearing aids are beneficial enough to be worth the hassle. Hearing aids are but one tool for communication available to deaf kiddos…certainly provide them as an option if you’d like, but don’t feel obligated to push them, and always give your child other tools at their disposal as well. Give them the ability to function comfortably with or without their hearing aids.

Along with avoiding a power struggle around the hearing aids, the other smart move we made was to drill into her head from a very young age that whenever she took her hearing aids out, she had to give them to a responsible adult (us parents, her teacher, or whoever else was watching her) right away and never just leave them laying about and to never play with the batteries. We did this both to avoid losing hearing aids if she took them out and left (or worse, threw) them somewhere and to be extra careful about her or other kids swallowing the batteries or destroying the hearing aids…either intentionally or by accident.

I think we may have done a little too well on that last point though because last night she comes into our room at 2:30 a.m. waking us up to hand me her hearing aids telling me that we forgot to take them off before bed. LOL. That totally could have waited till morning kiddo.