Saturday, May 8, 2010

Overnights

My oldest 'baby' will be 9 on Monday!! I can't believe it. We let him invite a few buds over for an overnighter on Thurs. since our school was out on Fri. He took us up on that offer and I'm so glad we did that! He (and the others) had a ball. Brook...not so much, she was starving for her brother's attention-which I hope he gives her today when they wake-and did aggravate the boys as much as she possibly could...oh well.
My thing about overnights...as I've already explained to some of the other mothers...........

I had rather be the house that kids gravitate towards. I know I'll watch them and I'm not doubting the other mothers' supervision, it's just that I'd rather get all the kids used to 'living w/hearing loss' under my supervision and let them have a front row seat to things like...

we have to flip lights on and off when they are w/out processors to get their attention and this includes while in the shower...
sometimes environmental noises outside make it hard for them to hear at great distances...
I want them all to practice communicating w/my kids at these times, I wanted to model for them how we do things rather than just have them throw in the towel and give up when they are unclear how to get a message across. So I made a point to say things like, "remember, we don't lock the bedroom door at night because when we go to sleep, we need access to this room should there be a fire or emergency...Gage wouldn't wake if we just knocked."
All the kids seem to 'get it' and one day I will let go and trust him/them enough to let him go on an overnighter w/classmates. Right now, I have them all in training, they just don't know it!

4 comments:

ann said...

Glad they had fun! Glad you are strong. Poor B!

David said...

When our kids were younger, there was some incident when one had either locked her sister out of the bedroom or otherwise abused her bedroom door. I told the offending child that if she abused the bedroom door, I would remove it for a time. (They could still dress/change in the bathroom) I was serious, too. In a Deaf household, line-of-sight communication is critical.

My wife & I tried to keep rules to a reasonable minimum and always have an explainable reason for each rule. Then we both enforced the rules consistently (pretty much - no one is completely 100%), since with four kids, you gotta enforce the rules to make the household function.

David

lbre969903 said...

I haven't let Evan stay the night at any of his hearing friends houses yet - only the parents who have children with hearing loss have gotten that privilege.. :)

Anonymous said...

My older sister and I are both deaf. We both grew up oral and mainsteamed public school. How are they communicating with each other? Is there alot of ignoring or "huh?" or any signs of struggle? My sister and I don't communicate. We are taking ASL but we miss our chances growing up.