All About Late-Onset/Late-Identified Hearing Loss — Episode 80 with Valerie James Abbott and Justin Osmond
Update: 2021-12-29
Description
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</figure>On this episode of the All About Audiology Podcast, Dr. Saperstein welcomes guests Justin Osmand and Valerie James Abbott to discuss their experiences surrounding late-onset/identified hearing loss.
Valerie James Abbott, author of the book Padapillo, shares the story of her youngest daughter, Bridget. Bridget passed her newborn hearing screen but as the years went on, was diagnosed with late-onset hearing loss.
Justin Osmand, of the Hearing Fund Foundation shares his story of late-identification at age 2 as hard-of-hearing, and how his family approached his education.
This week on the All About Audiology podcast:
- 2:30 – Bridget’s preschool teacher told Valerie that something seemed to be up with Bridget’s speech. Many times it’s teachers or people from outside the home who have a frame of reference of other kids to point out a child who is struggling.
- 8:00 – It’s very common for HoH and Deaf children to be visually aware of their surroundings. Older siblings may play an important role in visually modeling how to behave or complete tasks.
- 10:00 – Support from family, audiologists, hearing specialists, speech language pathologists, mentors and teachers, can help a Deaf or HoH child succeed.
- 13:00 – When a parent learns about their child’s diagnosis, parents have a choice of how to react to such news, and it is important to offset such news with as much positivity as possible.
- 16:00 – Ensuring that family members are part of the hearing loss journey and having representation of such a journey in one’s family are ways to make sure that the affected individual will feel included as a valid member of the family unit.
- 20:00 – Justin was bullied and his older brother stood up for him. From this experience, Justin learned that we have to learn to accept ourselves for who we are, and not what we are.
- 24:00 – Different individuals will feel differently about semantics and terminology that may be used to describe their life story. It is important to not use certain terms lightly in order to not be offensive.
- 30:00 – There seems to be more audiologists attending workshops on holding space, and reading or writing articles about the importance of meeting the emotional needs of their patients.
For more resources and research visit:
All About Audiology Facebook group
And the Prodana pay-it-forward platform here: https://prodana.org/practioner/lilach-saperstein/audiology-counseling–dr–lilach-saperstein
(Guest Links)
Justin’s foundation: https://www.hearingfund.org/
Valerie’s website: https://www.valeriejamesabbott.com/
Valerie’s book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093YFBGMQ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. House
- John Tracy clinic
- Alexander Graham Bell program
- Quote by Abraham Lincoln
- Dr. Lindsay Cockburn’s post with lots of book recommendations around hearing loss
Related Episodes
All About Writing a Book to Spread Awareness – Episode 78 with Michelle Wagner
Transcript:
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| Dr. Lilach Saperstein: Welcome to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein, and this is the show where we explore audiology from your perspective, the experience that you have at your audiologists office, and everywhere else in your life – at school with your friends, around the dinner table, and how audiology actually impacts your life. That is what the show is all about. And I’m so excited to launch two very exciting things at once with two exciting guests as well. So first of all, we are talking about the launch of an incredible book Padapillo with the author of this book, Valerie James Abbott. Thank you, Valerie for being in touch, for sending me a copy of the book, and sharing Bridget’s story and your family’s story in this lovely, lovely book. We’re gonna dive into that. In addition, we’re also talking about late onset hearing loss and how that experience is also unique and important to address. And with us today, we also have Justin Osman who’s going to tell us more about his journey as well as the incredible work that you are doing. So welcome to you both. Justin Osmand: I’m honored. Thank you for what you do. You’re an amazing podcast host. I’m honored to be on your show. Thank you. LS: And hey, Valerie. Valerie Abbott: Hi! LS: I’m happy to chat again. I always feel that way when I talk to people and then at a certain point, I’m like, I wish everyone could hear what you just said. So here we are. That’s why you have a podcast. Alright, so let’s start with you, Valerie. And I’d love for you to tell us about Bridget, about your family, and about how this fabulous book came to be. VA: Thank you so much for the invitation to join you today. I mean, we have millions of families around the world who share a journey. Although many of us take different paths and ours started back in 2005. My youngest daughter was born, Bridget, and she passed the newborn hearing screen and we had no reason to think of anything. She came home happy, healthy. My oldest child Mary Claire was three years older than her. So I kind of felt a little seasoned, [and] kind of knew what to expect. And when she [Bridget] began preschool at age two, we weren’t expecting anything other than a normal preschool experience. And it was about six months into that experience that her preschool teacher started to say something is up. It was actually during a parent teacher conference. They said ‘Are you concerned about Bridget’s speech or language development?’ And I said no. LS: So many times it’s teachers or people outside the home who don’t know your child, and they don’t know what’s normal for them or how they are all the time. To them, they also have the frame of reference of other kids and how children are doing in those environments. So it’s really good that you were able to hear them, that they were able to talk to you. That conversation is really important. And the second point on that is that they didn’t say we have concerns about her hearing their concerns about her speech. VA: Exactly. And part of that is because Bridget had become a fluent lip reader – fluent! And so she could understand what we were saying. She was processing it differently, [and] what she heard was different, but it was the preschool teachers who said something is up, and they recommended an early intervention evaluation and that quickly revealed that hearing loss was probably at play. And fast forward a couple of weeks, she was officially diagnosed with hearing loss. She was fitted for hearing aids and you would think that solved the problem and all the panic goes away. But really that’s where the journey just became more intense because so many of our questions were unanswered. How did this happen? When did this happen? Why did this happen? Is it going to be progressive? Is she going to need cochlear implants? Should we be learning sign language? There were all of these questions and not a lot of crystal clear answers – a lot of gray. LS: In fact, I was speaking to another couple this week – parents to a daughter who’s hard of hearing and they were in this stage at the time that we spoke. And they said we have so many questions. There’s so much confusion, uncertainty, and how do we make her feel that she is not wrong? Or that there’s something  Comments In Channel   Download from Google Play  Download from App Store  United States00:00 00:00 x   All About Late-Onset/Late-Identified Hearing Loss — Episode 80 with Valerie James Abbott and Justin OsmondMatthew Feiler |