Never turn a deaf ear to your children

BANGALORE: As a six month old toddler my son, Sai was diagnosed with profound deafness.When Lakshmi (my wife) and I found out, we were shattered. ‘Why did this happen to our child? Why to us?’ were the questions that arose in out minds and hearts. This July he will turn seven.I am Venkatagirish, Vice President for IBM and my wife is Lakshmi, a chartered account who decided to leave her job and devote her time to Sai and Ananya (our three-year-old daughter), our kids. Knowing that your child may not be able to live a fully independent and normal life is probably every parent’s worse nightmare.There are two things that you can do — mop about it or, get up and take charge of the situation. My wife and I decided on the latter.While Lakshmi was carrying Sai, she had rubella, however, she had no symptoms of it and as a result it went unaffected. I still remember so clearly. One day while I was playing with my little toddler, I noticed that he was not responding to sounds.Initially my wife told me that kids are like that, they do not always respond. But when it happened again, my wife became conscious of it as well. A visit to the pediatricians only confirmed our worse fears. He asked us to get Sai checked for Rubella, and the results were positive.The only way he could have got it was while he was in the womb.What followed were visits to the audiologists and a number of tests. After a number of screening tests at Rajan’s speech and hearing centre, we decided to get Sai the state-of-the-art hearing aids. But that was not all. There was still more to be done. For two years from then, my son went for rehabilitation sessions. We took him to Bala Vidyala in Chennai. These were probably the toughest two years of our lives. Using his hearing aid, Sai was checked for the audible frequency that he could hear. While he was taught the ability to associate sounds with facial expressions and objects, we were given demonstrations on how to communicate visually and with sounds with our child. Yes, we needed people to teach us how to communicate with our own child.Unlike most children who pick up words quickly, Sai needs the words to be repeated constantly so that he can register and then later mimic the words. The rehabilitation school helped my son. Thanks to the school his speech has improved. A child like Sai needs special attention.But there is a thin line between special attention and an overdose of attention.Be it a school or at home, it is very important to involve the child in all the normal activities which kids his age do.When Sai was diagnosed with hearing deficiency, the surgery for cochlear implant was not being done on children below the age of one.So we had no option but to help him with external hearing aids. Sai got his implants less than a year ago and it has helped tremendously.He does everything that a normal child does. He goes to school, learns karate, swims, plays with children his age and has also developed a fascination for cricket post the IPL.I guess we were helped by the right kind of people at the right time. Connecting with these people did my family a lot of good. I guess the most important lessons we learnt raising Sai were, children need investment of time, energy and oneself, especially children with special abilities.Empathy is good, sympathy will not help. It’ll cripple your child’s ability and capability to stand on his own feet, independently. As a father, I say that children like Sai need parents like us to give them that special push only to start — they need us and not crutches.