“Everybody has a challenge […] we all have something” (10:10). My mother’s challenge is hearing impairment. Since birth, she’s not been able to hear from her left ear. Because her impairment prevents her from hearing her voice, it sounds different from most. Her hearing prevents her from being able to distinguish voices in a group, particularly higher pitched voices.
Having hearing impairment comes with quite a few challenges. As a child, my mother would always have to make plans to sit closest to the front of class in order to be able to hear (1:13). In a group of people talking, it’s super difficult for hear to distinguish voices. She says, “Another issue that was always hard for me was being in a group of people, because I couldn’t usually hear anyone unless they were right next to me” (1:26). Having hearing impairment is quite difficult to deal with, especially from a young age. Other children would frequently tease and belittle her going as far as simply ignoring her.
As an adult, my mother still faces some discrimination and other challenges. She said “My biggest challenge now […] being a person with hearing loss – even people that are very close friends do this, and I don’t know why, but just talking over me. You know, as if I’m not only deaf but stupid too” (23:33). People are very quick to make assumptions and judgements based simply on how someone looks or sounds. It seems like there’s a tendency to assume that people with disabilities are also mentally disabled. This led to teasing and bullying in school. My mother said during my interview with her, “Everyone’s so self-conscious at that age [middle school] anyway so there’s a lot of bullies and whatever. If anyone’s the least bit different they pick on you” (7:51). Because of the difference in how my mother speaks, she tended to be picked on or discriminated against in school. In particular, being in a group of people made it worse. She says “If people knew I couldn’t hear or whatever sometimes they would just ignore me or talk over me or something” (01:60). The effects of this continue on to this day. When I asked about how the teasing affected her she said “It affected me pretty greatly. I mean my self-esteem, and not feeling valued or important enough for people to like not talk over me or for them to repeat themselves or something” (02:22). Lack of empathy and understanding from her classmates here led to feelings of alienation and self-consciousness that still have an effect today. People don’t realize the extent of the consequences their actions have.
Despite this, there are certainly some social issues that come along with being a parent of someone with a disability like Down syndrome. My mother said “Sometimes parents are just nervous to have their kids around somebody who is different. And I just never felt like we were in the mainstream of everything” (17:38). Fear of the unknown mixed with a lack of widespread education about different disabilities seems to cause discrimination and distance between parents of children with disabilities and other parents.
Lack of understanding combined with misinformation seems to be a significant contributing factor to discrimination and fear of a certain group. This can be seen in the graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman. In the novel, Spiegelman’s father Vladek details his experiences during the Holocaust. When describing how non-Jewish people were taught to relate to Jewish people, Vladek explains that “the mothers always told so: ‘Be careful! A Jew will catch you to a bag and eat you!’ so they taught to their children” (Spiegelman, 149). A common myth about Jewish people during the Holocaust is that during the Passover, they need the blood of Christian children in order to make matzo. Obviously, this is absurd and is simply a result of misinformation and lack of understanding. In the book and during the Holocaust, this led to discrimination, just as it does currently with people who have disabilities (to a different extent of course).
People tend to fear what they don’t understand and this applies to relations with other people as well. In order to prevent discrimination, a healthy dose of understanding and information about those who are different from ones-self is necessary. When I asked if she believes that society can become more tolerant of people with disabilities like hearing impairment or Down syndrome my mother said “Well, I mean they need to. I mean just people with disabilities of all sorts. I mean tolerance is needed. I think there’s still a lot of intolerance towards anyone with disability. I think it’s getting better in some ways” (15:30). The future is starting to look up in terms of more tolerance of people with disabilities and special needs.
A fantastic story about tolerance and acceptance is that of how my parents met. Both my mom and dad lived in Germany for work (my dad was a software-engineer working for hospitals there, and my mom was a teacher for the army), and they met through an online chat service. Eventually, they got to know each other pretty well and started to talk about meeting up. “When it came time for us to meet I was scared to death”, my mom said, “for him to hear me. [voice chokes up] But anyway I finally got up the nerve to say something. That I was afraid for him to hear me” (27:48). She felt worried that because of the way that she talks, she’d be judged or that my father wouldn’t like her. Eventually, she did tell him about her hearing impairment and her worries about how she sounds. “I sounded differently or whatever and that I was afraid to speak on the phone and he said ‘let me tell you something, let me tell you about my cousin Bobby.’ He grew up with a deaf cousin, I mean totally deaf, and his cousin didn’t talk much. But Bobby would talk if he was with someone he was totally comfortable with and he [my dad] was one of those people. […] That was part of what made me fall in love with your dad” (27:52). Acceptance is incredibly important for a person’s mental well-being, and everyone, regardless of any difference they may have, deserves to feel accepted and understood. A small bit of acceptance can go a long way.