Decisions

An overwhelming part of being a parent is the responsibility to make decisions on behalf of your children. Some decisions are easy and inconsequential- what should we dress our baby in today? Some decisions are hard and yet will probably work out either way- which primary school should we choose for our child? Some decisions seem so important - I will fight with my three year old for an hour to get her to eat something sensible for dinner – yet I know in ten years time I won’t even remember this. And some decisions that we make in our own lives will have an enormous impact on our children – a new sibling, a decision to go back to work, a house move. Every minute of every day, we juggle choices on behalf of our children, about our children. And we don’t always get it right, we make mistakes- hopefully just on the small things. But all we can do is to keep trying- trying to do the best for our children, trying to be the best parent we can be, to take advice, but to trust that in our heart we are up to the challenge, that despite any formal training, we are qualified to do the right thing by our children.
Australia has a good solid framework established for parents of newly diagnosed children with hearing loss to enable the parents to make choices about their child’s future. Unfortunately, living in the UAE when Henry was born, our decision process was a lot more haphazard, ill-informed and random. We made decisions without realising we were making them, or really understanding the issues. My information came from a dangerously easy, yet enormously confusing source: google.
In the end though, the path we have chosen; to have Henry receive bilateral Cochlear Implants, in less than a weeks time now, is the same choice we would have made, had we known all the information at the beginning.
We know that Henry is deaf. And cochlear implants are not a ‘cure’. The journey starts with a long invasive surgery and that is the easy part. Henry will have to work hard to learn to interpret the ‘sound’ provided by his implants. And then he will have to learn to use that sound to listen, understand and then eventually speak. He will have to work hard every step of the way, together with us as parents and his therapists, audiologists, the whole team of us. However, we are making this decision because we believe it is the best for Henry. There is a big world out there, and this world communicates through speech. Cochlear implants are the best chance Henry has of learning to listen and speak, and for this reason we embark on this journey.