Moments in the mess
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Moments in the mess
E7: A Chat with Mel: Parenting, Deafness, and Discovering New Ways to Communicate (Transcribed)
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In this episode I chat with Mel who has 2 grown up daughters in their 20’s. Her youngest daughter was born deaf, we discuss diagnosis, the support Mel and Jaz had, learning sign language and how to support children with different needs.
This episode is the Transcribed version so our deaf followers can follow along with the episode.
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Welcome and Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_00But I really hope you enjoyed this episode. It was amazing to get the chance to chat with Mel and I hope you learned something as I did as well. Hello Mel, how are you? Hi Bethon, I'm fine, thank you. Good. Could you mind just introducing yourself and how many children you have, please?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, of course. My name's Mel. I've got two children. Holly, who's 28, and um Jazzy, who's 25.
SPEAKER_00Wow, some big kids, big babies now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're grown up now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you said one has moved away and the other one lives at you.
SPEAKER_01Um, yes, Holly lives um in London with her boyfriend, and Jasmine lives with us here in Whitstable.
SPEAKER_00Lovely. So now that you have a side of parenting, how have you found parenting as a whole and enjoyed it, or are you glad to be out the other side?
SPEAKER_01Um no, I would say actually I really enjoy parenting actually from start to finish. And um yeah, now mine have grown up and sort of to a large extent left the nest. Um uh yeah, I I sort of I do miss it a little bit. I sort of miss miss them not being around as much, but also it is very it's a lot more relaxing now. So it's quite nice being the other side because obviously I just get the nice bits mainly.
SPEAKER_00Probably more expensive though, now would you say, with having to take them out?
SPEAKER_01Um no, actually completely completely the opposite. Um occasionally they even treat me. Oh my goodness. That sounds really funny.
SPEAKER_00It's a fun day. Um, so your youngest daughter, Jazz, she's deaf.
SPEAKER_01Yes, she's profoundly deaf. She was born profoundly deaf.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so how did you find out? Was it through her hearing test when she was born?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, back when she was born, they did um eight-month hearing checks. Um now they do newborn screening. Um, but back then it was the eight-month hearing test, um, and she failed the hearing test. They brought her back a month later and she failed that again, and then we privately took her to um I think it was somewhere in London basically, and they diagnosed her with uh profound deafness at 10 months old.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness, did you notice anything before?
SPEAKER_01No, I didn't notice anything, to be honest. There was nothing at all really that made me. I mean, it was only when I'd been for these uh the screening at eight and nine months when she wasn't responding that I did sort of think, hmm. Um the only thing I had noticed before that was that she didn't respond to her name, she didn't know her name. When I called her, she didn't turn around, that sort of thing. Yeah, um, so I did think that was a bit strange at her age, but I didn't have any reason to think that she was deaf, it just didn't enter my head, so yeah, it was complete out of the blue shock.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I guess before eight months they're not really doing a lot.
SPEAKER_01No, they're not, they're just babbling anyway, and also as well, um, when I would come into the room, she would turn round, um, you know, that sort of thing, or uh and I now realize that she was probably uh reacting to the the shadow or the light or the movement, yeah, you know, the uh vibration of the floor or doors, that sort of thing. There was no reason for me to, you know, for a second think there was anything wrong with her hearing apart from she didn't know her name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So when you got the diagnosis, how did you feel personally? Did you find it really overwhelming?
Hearing Aids Struggles and Limits
SPEAKER_01Yeah, completely overwhelming. I was in complete shock. I just I just didn't expect it. And also, to be perfectly honest, had absolutely no idea where to begin. Um, I'd never actually even had met anybody deaf before in my life. Um it, you know, it's not like now, now obviously you've got the internet, we never had had all that 25 years ago. You you know, I mean, now you you you know, uh deafness was something that uh unless you'd experienced it, you just knew nothing about. I knew that obviously people use sign language, um, obviously I knew that, um, but I just didn't know where to start. I mean, we was we were referred to um Great Ormond Street, and um yeah, it was completely overwhelming because the main thing that I remember as well was when we went to Great Ormond Street, they said that deafness can often um be accompanied by um other conditions, um, and that was my main worry that um it she wasn't just deaf, um, but you know, she may have other associated problems, and then obviously um that took a while for them to rule everything out and then basically say that she was completely healthy, apart from um, you know, she was deaf.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, what was the next step once you got diagnosed? Did she get hearing aids? What happened after that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the next step was um she got fitted with hearing aids literally, I think about a week before her first birthday. Um that was just a complete nightmare. Um, the hearing aids that she had were so large because she was so deaf that they had to give her the strongest hearing aids they could have. The hearing aids were actually bigger than her ears, and um she didn't, as you can imagine, a one-year-old baby doesn't like a hearing aid stuck on the back of their ears, the moulds were sort of uncomfortable, and um she just used to I would put them in and she would pull them out, and I'd put them in and she would pull them out, and we'd this would go on for about 50 times a day. Um, and yeah, the hearing aid business was a complete nightmare, to be honest, and it was also completely unsuccessful. Um, but that took many, many months, probably took about a year of trying different hearing aids at different volumes and different settings, and for them to say that um she wasn't in the speech banana, which which basically meant that she could hear loud noises with them, but she wasn't able to access any speech at all. Right. So, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, did it delay her speech that then?
Learning BSL and Building Language
SPEAKER_01Well, Jasmine didn't have any speech, Jasmine doesn't have any speech. Um Jasmine's deafness, jasmine's profoundly deaf, and she was at the bottom end of profound deafness, um which meant that the hearing aids were of absolutely no use. Um so we we basically we started signing um probably I would say about six weeks after she was diagnosed, we got a teacher of the deaf who came to our house, she went through everything with us, um, and she sent somebody round and she did some baby signing signing with us. Um and within about six weeks of us starting to use baby signs with Jasmine, she started signing back. Um and that was that was her method of communication. We didn't even bother with speech, she couldn't hear it, she couldn't access it. So it was we were told she would need to we would need to learn sign language, and she that's that's her form of communication.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And do you feel like you are absolutely nailed it down now 25 years later? Because sign language is hard to get used to. It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01When we first started learning sign language, I mean um we I I went on a level one sign language course, BSL course, and then I did level two. Um, yeah, and it felt like when I was told I had to learn sign language, I I felt like it was like an absolute mountain to climb. I I didn't, I thought, how am I ever gonna be able to learn the language? Um, and especially sign language, because I just thought, oh my god, you know, I it's not again, it wasn't even something that was that heard of, but I know it was heard of. It's not like it's out now at now people were you've got signing people on the tele and on the internet, and you got signing um, you know, sign language on you can Google it and YouTube it and do everything else, it's really accessible. Back then, you didn't have that accessibility. And I remember um the teacher of the deaf, uh, she came to our house and she used to give me about 10 lines, um, 10 sentences to learn every week. And I used to video her and then play back the video because I couldn't remember the signs that she'd shown me, and then we'd go through them. Yeah, um, and then eventually, yeah, I it was like little steps, and then I felt more confident. Then I signed up to the BSL level one class, and then yeah, I mean, now I've totally nailed it. Yeah, I mean, by the time Jasmine started um her infant school, um, they said that her signing ability was of that of a deaf child brought up by deaf parents, like she really had come on leaps and bounds. She, you know, although her language was delayed, her English language, her BSL language, her ability um to use sign language was very good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and did it help with writing things as well, or was that slightly delayed?
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, to be honest, um all deaf children are slightly delayed. All let's rephrase that. All children usually that use BSL as their first sound as their first language are usually um slightly behind in schools um because they don't have access to the sounds that everybody else has. They don't hear what's going on around them, they don't hear other people's conversations, they don't hear it on the TV, they're not picking up the information. So um the majority of deaf children, especially then, um before a lot of children now have had cochlear implants, yeah, but especially then before the cochlear implants, um, yeah, Jasmine was delayed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you can't sound it out, that's all they say. No, that's it. Yeah, that's heard, yeah. So did she have extra support at school for all of these sorts of things?
School Support and Access
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, she went to a um she went to a mainstream infant and um primary school um that had a hearing, um a partial hearing unit attached to it. Um, and she spent some of the lessons in the mainstream classrooms with um support, you know, a signing support um person, teacher. Um, and then she spent the rest of the time in the deaf unit with um deaf children for other other classes.
SPEAKER_00But yeah. Was the deaf unit in the school near you, or did you have to seek it was there, was it quite hard to find?
SPEAKER_01Um luckily there was one in um quite near us, it was only sort of a 10-minute drive away. Um, but we wasn't so fortunate when Jasmine got to um senior school. Right, there wasn't that much around. Um there was only one um unit that she did go to. It was a mainstream school, um, but there was about 1,500 pupils and only about 20 deaf pupils, so it was quite um it was quite difficult for her because it was obviously such a big school and so few deaf pupils. Um, and to get a proper deaf, to get a deaf school um where they're you know a full deaf school, which we did think about sending her to, and it was something we would have liked to have sent her to. Um, they were they were boarding schools, they were too far away, and we didn't want to send her to boarding school.
SPEAKER_00No, no, you don't want to completely isolate her out of the school.
SPEAKER_01No, and she didn't want to go either, so um, yeah, but uh yeah, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00So has she faced any like negative experiences growing up deaf, or has it generally been quite positive?
Social Attitudes and Resilience
SPEAKER_01I don't know how to say um yeah, I mean, definitely there's been negative um experiences from other people um with her growing up deaf. Um not so much uh uh I mean I had comments made to me that were very negative and very upsetting that you know I found really quite hard to deal with. But uh unfortunately there's just an awful lot of um what would you say, I don't know, ignorance out there really. Um but mainly when she was younger, obviously I could protect her from all that because she couldn't hear what people were saying, but I had things said to me that what I just used to think, what you know, I just can't believe you've actually come out and said something like that. Very, very rude. Um when she got older, um, when she went to secondary school, she did have quite a negative experience there. She was bullied by a couple of the well, certainly bullied by one person in the school, um, really singled her out. Um, but generally, um yeah, I mean, I think it's like anything in life, you just get some not very pleasant people and you have to deal with them. But Jasmine's very resilient, and um, I've always always brought her up that it she doesn't mat doesn't matter that she's deaf. Yeah, she can she still can do everything, the same as every everybody else. She has the same chances, she has the same well, she doesn't have the same chances to be honest, she gets far less chances, but I've always given her the you go for it, yeah, and your deafness is not gonna stop you, and she's always taken that on board with her, yeah, and she's very, very confident, and um, and she's really pushed herself to you know to get where she's got.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we were saying earlier about how successful she is being online, she's got her own blog, and she goes around the world and everything, like nothing really appears to have stopped her from doing what she's doing. No, it hasn't.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I will say when she left college, um, that was a real eye-opener for us because there was absolutely no help, no support whatsoever. She was just out there, yeah, you know, and it was like, okay, so you've finished an education now, sort of. There was nothing, there was absolutely nothing was done to give her any help getting a job. Um, so this is why she set up her YouTube channel, yeah, and um basically she she applied for loads of jobs, we went to job fairs. I think nobody wanted to give her a chance. All they could see is that you know she was profoundly deaf, um, she couldn't speak, she signed. Um, and it was every door was just shut in her face. Yeah, but she carried on doing this vlog. Um, and then when she got to 18, no, no, no. I think when she got to 2,000 subscribers, she was able to monetarize it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and she carried on doing that until yeah, she went viral when she was 20 with two of her vlogs, it massively took off. Um, and she's now actually described as um I think what is it? Um, the UK's biggest deaf YouTuber, I think.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, and she's got over 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, she's got over 25,000 subscribers on Instagram, TikTok, a lot of social media platforms. She's got a lot of followers, and um, and it's basically because it's all been about she gives a very positive message for other deaf people, and she gets a lot of positive, you know, she gets a lot of deaf people saying, You've inspired me. I was, you know, I felt what's the word? I I you know, I used to be sort of I didn't have the confidence, and then when I saw your videos, I thought, oh wow, if Jasmine can do it, I can do it. And and that's that's basically what she's made the the um the videos for to inspire and to encourage other deaf people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so amazing. You must be so proud as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just yeah, yes, I am very proud.
SPEAKER_00If you if you're gonna be given the opportunity, make sure you're at the front of the queue and you absolutely fight for it as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and she has, and everything that she has done, she's done off her own back. She was never given a a hand up or a step up. She really has done it all off her own back, which yeah, I'm very proud of.
A More Visual World and Accessibility
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, and I think we're more of a visual community now, aren't we? We have TikTok, Instagram, everything as well, so she can get herself out there.
SPEAKER_01And it's so much better now for the deaf community, yeah. Um, because like you say, it is all very visual. It's you know, you've got all the social media, and and it, you know, it's so much better than back in the day when you didn't have that. Um, even FaceTime now. Yeah, you know, she it when she was growing up, I think she grew up with FaceTime, you know, in her teens, and she's able to chat to her friends on FaceTime rather than messaging, but you know, but um yeah, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, there's sign in everywhere, even if you go to concerts, someone sign in at concerts and sits on the TV. And because I remember when I was growing up, it was just really late at night programmes might have the lessons signed in the corner or really early.
SPEAKER_01Or it's seven in the morning, something like that.
SPEAKER_00But when you when Jazz wanted to probably just watch cartoons, she's not gonna have that, that wasn't on there. No, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_01I mean, what she did use to have I did use to put the subtitles on from when she was very young. Um, even though she wasn't able to read the subtitles, I just used to think, well, eventually when she learns to read, she'll she'll pick up the English and start recognizing it.
SPEAKER_00The odd word, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um, yeah, so yeah, so I think that definitely helped with her reading.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So when you were growing up with Jazz, was there any support groups or anything that you went to, or did you just kind of just muddle through and just did things yourself?
Community, Subtitles, and Support Networks
SPEAKER_01Uh no, actually, I was quite lucky in my area. They did have um some support groups. They had like um the Deaf Play group, and there were other parents of deaf children there. And I have to say, the um local council that I was in at the time, um, they were very good. Um she yeah, I felt like I had support from the the um like the teacher of the deaf for the council at the time, and then they had um you know people working alongside them. Um also we had the Bexley Deaf Children Society, and they used to um do quite a lot of events and stuff like that. So Jasmine did know other deaf children, and there were other deaf families, and so no, I did feel like I was lucky in that way, definitely. That's really good.
SPEAKER_00That's really good. So if you could give any advice to someone who's just found out their child's deaf, what would you say?
SPEAKER_01Would you say I would say that um it's definitely not as scary as the initial diagnosis. I think when you're you're told that initially and it's such a shock and um so worrying, and you're kind of scared for the future, and you know what's it gonna hold, that sort of thing. But if I'd known then what I know now, I would say, you know, it's a journey you go on, but it it's um it's yeah, it's it's not as um not as worrying as as you initially think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you get there in the yeah, definitely. Yeah, um so how is Jaz finding you said it's a bit more open in the community now, and she's doing really well. So in adult life, she feels the world's a worster, she's not having to struggle with coping with anything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, nothing holds her back at all. Like um, like you said, she's just come back from you know five months travelling round the world with um her friend Benny, who's also profoundly deaf. Yeah, the two of them just took off together and uh went all over Australia and New Zealand and Asia um and um yeah, living their best life. And uh no, she's uh she just she just gets on with it, she's just got a very positive can-do attitude, and uh yeah, she just gets on with it, and uh it's great.
Advice for Newly Diagnosed Families
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's really amazing. So, just to end um the podcast, we always ask a few quick fire questions, yeah. As quick as you can. If you want to talk longer, that's fine, because some people end up talking a lot longer in these ones than the other ones, but it's fine, really. So, can you name parenting in one word? Um more than one.
SPEAKER_01Just thinking. Um happiness.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's lovely. I like that. What one piece of advice would you wish that you would be given before you became a parent?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I don't know, that's a hard one, really. Um, do you know? I think I would just say enjoy it, don't worry too much about it. Um, because it all and and just you know, do your best. You're never going to be Mother Earth, nobody expects it. You're gonna have your good days, your bad days. Don't beat yourself up about the bad days, and um, you know, just do your best because that's all we can do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And what part of parenting did you love the most or do you love the most still?
SPEAKER_01I I love just spending I love and love, just spending time with my girls and watching them grow and turning into beautiful people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and final one, would you change anything at all about your parenting life?
Adult Independence and World Travel
Quick‑Fire Parenting Reflections
SPEAKER_01No, I wouldn't really change anything because I think everything that comes along, they're just different experiences, and I think there's nothing nothing really that I would change because I think the good and the bad you learn from them. Yeah, um so no, I can't think I would change everything because whatever you've done, you can't go back and change it, and you just deal with what comes up and you get along with it, you try your best, and I think you can't really do much more than that. No, um, it was very difficult because I felt like my eldest daughter to some extent had to take a back seat for my youngest daughter, yeah, simply because my youngest daughter needed so much more attention put into in you know, into her. Um, and that is something that I do would like to say probably to other parents if they are in that position, um, is just to do your best, don't feel guilty about the fact that because you do, you can't help it, um, but just do your best and acknowledge the fact that it's there's nothing you can do about it, you can't change the situation and um explain to the other child that uh the other child is getting probably more attention and more fast and all the rest of it. Um yeah, it's just unfortunately the way it is, and you just sort of uh just just to do your best.
Closing and Follow Us
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I really hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Moments in the Mess, and I'll speak to you soon.