El Paso schools work with hearing impaired kids
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Article Launched:10/30/2006
Children with hearing loss are not always diagnosed early in their formative years, and this can lead to critical delay in learning language – the primary method by which most people communicate.
“It is a very isolating disability,” said Lourdes Johnson, a nurse at Hillside Elementary School and mother of a 21-year-old son who is almost completely deaf. “My son was very blessed. I have two other children, and we all learned sign language so we could communicate with him. About 85 percent of the children who are deaf go home to families where nobody can communicate with them. That’s why the schools become their life.
“The news was devastating, and we did a lot of crying. As a parent, I felt guilty I felt that my son was already behind on his language development because he was not diagnosed right away.”
Johnson said her son’s hearing impairment was detected when he was 1Â years old. On average, hearing problems are not detected in children until they are 3. Most experts consider that children develop most of their language skills by age 5.
Johnson’s son, Charles “Chuckie” Johnson, is a junior education major at the University of Texas at El Paso. He uses sign language and has learned to read lips.
Most of the students in the Regional Day School Program for the deaf attend Hillside Elementary School. Nearly 200 children from El Paso County, and as far away as Dell City, arrive in buses to attend the program.
Burleson Elementary School also has students with hearing loss, and when these students move on, they attend Ross Middle School and Burges High School.
Cathy Chapman, a teacher at Burleson Elementary, works with hearing-impaired children. She said some parents seek to mainstream their children in schools as much as possible, while others, depending on the degree and type of impairment their children have, prefer for them to be in signing classes.
At Burleson, a speech therapist works intensely with the children who have cochlear implants to help them use regular language rather than rely only on sign language.
A hearing aid generally works by amplifying sounds, but a cochlear implant stimulates the auditory nerve by bypassing the damaged parts of the ear. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the device sends signals to the brain, “which recognizes the signals as sound.”
Other students with only mild hearing loss, including some who use hearing aids, attend regular home schools.
According to Texas Department of State Health Services, about seven in every 1,000 children born each year in El Paso have some type of hearing impairment. El Paso’s incidence rate is double the national and state averages, which hover between three and four in every 1,000 children.
“We don’t know yet whether it is because the diagnosing has improved or whether we have more children, per se, with hearing loss in El Paso,” said Dr. Gilbert Handal, chairman of pediatrics at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center. “Research will tell us more about why we have this statistic.”
El Pasoan Margaret Schroeder has a 5-year-old daughter, Katie, who was diagnosed with hearing loss when she was 3.
“She has progressive hearing loss stemming from a genetic condition,” said Schroeder, a member of En Voz Alta, a support group for families with children who have a hearing impairment. “It is very important to have an early diagnosis and intervention. This will give children a better chance of developing normal language skills.”
Her daughter has a hearing aid so she can hear the sounds of other children at Mesita Elementary School. Most of her hearing loss has been in one ear.
“Katie’s speech is good. She has normal language for her age, although she does have some articulation problems,” Schroeder said. “She loves music, and we read to her. In the beginning, we did not suspect at all that she had any hearing loss.”
In Europe, she said, children as young as 6 months old have received cochlear implants.
En Voz Alta was created by parents who were frustrated about the lack of information, efficient and timely diagnostic tests and access to technology to help their children.
In Texas, screening tests for newborns are mandatory, but members said the calibrations for the screenings are inconsistent and the same child may receive several different test results that further delay the extra help they and their families need.
Handal said he sees many children with hearing loss and is acquainted with the frustrations that parents feel. In response to their needs, Texas Tech is helping to sponsor the first daylong symposium that will focus on hearing loss.
Justin Osmond, a member of the singing Osmond family, will be the keynote speaker at the conference Wednesday.
Osmond, a musician who is hearing-impaired, travels throughout the world advocating for the needs of hearing-impaired people.
Other sponsors are En Voz Alta, the Regional Day School Program of the Deaf/El Paso Independent School District, the El Paso Rehabilitation Center, Thomason Hospital, the Department of Rehabilitation Services and the Ysleta, Clint, Socorro school districts.
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at [email protected]; 546-6140.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/health/ci_4572609
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