BBC programmes on deafness on ‘Listen Again’
Wonderful series on the BBC about deafness, to be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/adifferentworld.shtml. It’s a series of five programmes, each just 15 minutes.
I’m just listening to programme one (requires Real Player), which is billed as
Two mothers of deaf children talk of their experiences. Sharon Ridgeway explains her delight that her baby daughter, like her, is deaf, while Cornelia Wilson, a hearing woman with two deaf sons, describes other people’s reactions to her children.
Other people’s reactions certainly is the strange one. It varies widely when we tell them about baby3’s deafness. (You can find all the postings on this topic by clicking on the “Silent World” link to the right.) I think that tabloids’ overuse of “tragic” means people use the word too easily.
(”I’m a deaf person first, and my daughter is a deaf person,” one of the mothers is saying. Speaking perfectly - you’d not know that she’s deaf. This is strange. Is she being voiced, or interpreted from sign language? Seems like she’s not profoundly deaf.)
The series also has the transcripts of the programmes in PDF format. What a fantastic resource. How odd that Fox News - say - hasn’t done something like this, eh? You’d think commercial broadcasters would be falling over themselves to do stuff that would be useful to the wider community.
(”The babies don’t like hearing aids, they take them out, chew them, go for the batteries… but this is what’s normal for us, this is our reality,” the second (hearing) mother is saying.) I think that’s it: this is our normal.
..And now on to programme 2, which is about cochlear implants… A woman who became deaf and has one cochlear implant: “It brings me to the level where if a normal person had this hearing they’d want to go and get a hearing aid.” And a psychiatrist who had had some deaf patients, and then had a daughter who was diagnosed profoundly deaf (which is same as baby3). He didn’t find out until she was five or six months old. Hooray for early screening.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- An iPod quirk: you haven't played a song until you've played it all (7 December 2005; score: 35.93%)
- Strictly speaking, it's Catch-26: of deafness, syndromes and DNA (28 February 2006; score: 30.82%)
- The big black wings of decisions avoided (14 May 2005; score: 28.52%)
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June 13th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Heh! Babies are fantastic. You can invent whatever clever stuff you want, but give it to a baby, and said baby will most likely stick it straight in their mouth. “Can I eat this? No? What’s the point then?”
June 14th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
Amazing series. The PDF transcripts are a real boon as (being 90% deaf) the Powerbook’s speakers aren’t quite loud enough! All the programmes are fascinating in their own right, but I sympathise with the chaps in Programme 4. I began to go deaf in my late teens. Just made it through college, but hearing began to go rapidly downhill in my twenties. Now 46, it seems to have stabilised, but I need two hearing aids and find all sorts of situations very frustrating, especially listening to music. Classical music is a nightmare - in the quiet bits, I have to turn the volume up, only to have my head blown off in the loud bits!
Main worry is my 2 young kids 11 and 8. No signs of deafness yet, so they’ve learned their speech and social skills, but my audiologist suggests there will be a fair chance that my problem is a genetic one, and that it will be be passed down. Previously, I was told that it was nerve deafness due to mumps, so we’re set up for a series of meetings with the genetic counsellor.
Charles, hope baby3 is well. It’s been a breath of fresh air reading your thoughts on this subject.