WHAT THE *#^%@%!
Thank you Jenny for bringing this to my attention.
I just read this article about this insane custody battle over a hearing child where the deaf parent is at a disadvantage because she cannot speak! Ricky Taylor (www.ridorlive.com) featured this article so I lifted this from his site to help spread the word. *^$#%
What To Do? In Colorado, a hearing father is attempting to take a hearing child away from his deaf mother, citing the speech and sounds as the means to pull the boy away from his mother. Here is the article that I received via the email.
My ex husband is battling for custody of my son and he thinks I’m unable to raise a hearing child due to my disablitity. Please email me at sunmoon_6@msn.com for any comments or a websites about deaf parents can raise hearing kids and doesn’t cause learning disablitity due to lack of speech. Thank you.
Chris understand that normally the court feels that a child this young needs to spend the majority of his time with his mother, however there are extenuating circumstances in this case to where that scenario is not in the best interest of the child. Caleb’s mother is deaf but does have some speech. Sarah’s friend that she is residing with, Glenn is also deaf and non-verbal. The majority of Sarah’s friends are deaf and non-verbal also. Since Sarah’s deafness is due to a childhood illness and not genetic, Caleb is a normal hearing child. For these reasons, the time Caleb, a normal hearing child, spends with his mother at home or in a social setting is mostly non-verbal. Since Caleb is now learning to develop his speech and vocal patterns spending the majority of his time this type of environment could cause developmental delays or even the possiblitiy of a permanent learning disability.
There are two instances that this situation is already starting to develop. Most of the Monday’s that Chris has parenting time with Caleb, Caleb spends the enire day with out any vocalization at all, only signing to his father. When Chris has Caleb for the two days, usually by the second day, he starts to verbalize a little but the majority of his communication is through sign language. His mother, Sarah, is teaching sign language and that is important for him to know so he can communicate with his mother, the others that reside in her household and in social situations with her friends. Crhis also worked with Caleb, at Sarah’s request, to keep him learn sign language. However, it is as equally if not more important for Caleb to learn speech and vocalization since he is a normal hearing child.
The second situation has arisen from some of the vocalization that Caleb has learned. He has recently learned how to scream, while playing, while getting excited about something he is doing or when mad. This is normal for all children to go through. Normally when a child screams the parent would guide the child about the time that screaming is appropriate and not appropriate, such as inside voices and outside voices. Unfortunely, with Sarah being deaf and spending most of her time in a deaf environment, she or anyone else around her cannot hear Caleb when he screams. To the child there is nothing wrong with this. To them it is a new exciting thing they have learned to accomplish. Chris and Caleb’s paternal grandmother have tried working with him to learn when this is appropriate and not appropriate, however with the limited amount of time that he is now spending with his father it has not yet been effective. This have developed to the poiont that when Sarah and Caleb were at her parents for the holidays, her parents talked to Sarah about it and told her she needed to talk to Chris about him working with Caleb about his screaming, which Sarah did. Chris explained to her that he and Caleb’s paternal grandmother both had been trying but so far to no avail.
People accept inappropriate behaviors more from small children, however as Caleb continues to grow older, others will start to chatise him for thise behaviors, which could lead to changes in the way he interacts socially with others. Currently he is a sweet lovable and outgoing child who very much enjoys socializing with other individuals.
Chris is not asking the court to discrimiate against Sarah because of her disabiltiy but to recongize Caleb’s rights to have the opportunity to develop like any other normal hearing child of 15 months of age. By allowing Caleb to spend an equal amount of time with his father in a hearing and speaking environment as he does with his mother in a non-hearing and non-verbal environment will be in his best interest to help him develop more like the hearing and verbal child he is.
Hopefully, by Caleb spending equal time with both parents, he will develop normally for a hearing and speaking child. However, in the future if a concern is expressed that there are developmental delays, testing should be done. If it is discerned that there are truly developmental delays parenting time should then changed to where Caleb’s father becomes the primary caregiver in order for Caleb to spend more time in a hearing and verbal environment. Once it is discerned that Caleb is back to his appropriate age level in development, parenting time could then be changed back to being equally divided between both parents.
