Of Fences & College Freshmen

By Leeanne Seaver

When you drive fast enough, you can see through the fencework along the roads to the things behind them. Children on a swing set, a swimming pool, rusted out cars or a rose garden reveal themselves to you almost clearly. I noticed the wide banks of the Mississippi River were muddy instead of underwater during the late summer drought here in my newly adopted state of Illinois . I watched the herons poking through the slurry as we slowed to a stop at a traffic light. Then they completely disappeared, and I couldn't see anything except the slated fence right in front of my face. At a standstill, I was reminded that there was something between me and the scenery beyond that I hadn't been focusing on: a fence.

Leaving my son at college last week has brought me to another kind of stop, and a look at what I can and can't see from this new vantage point. I now have time to ponder how he grew up so quickly, and the speed at which I've moved through the last nineteen years raising this deaf child. Certainly, I have been focused on his needs, as well as those of my two hearing children and husband. I also have another career aside from Hands & Voices. All of this has required an extraordinary juggling of agendas and obligations. There has not been much time to stop down and assess it-after all things in motion tend to stay in motion. I multitasked through all of it.that is what moms and working women do.

If I ever wished I could stop and take a macro-view of our decisions relative to parenting a deaf child, the concerns of the moment often overwhelmed my desire, replacing it with anxiety over his:

language
lack of language
communication modality
communication methodology
literacy
expressive communication skills
receptive communication skills
social skills
social life
self-consciousness
insecurity
emotional health
too much work, not even play
too much play, not enough work
amplification
lack of amplification
frustration with amplification
lost amplification
cost of amplification
hearing friends
deaf friends
lack of genuine friends
educational achievement
lack of academic progress
clueless general ed teacher (some, not all)
teacher's low expectations (some, not all)
apathetic, uninspired deaf ed teachers (some, not all)
unmeasurable IEP goals
unimplemented IEPs
ineffective IEPs
unattended IEPs
lack of personal investment in his IEP
self advocacy
learned helplessness
bullies
being a bully
misunderstandings
being misunderstood
communication in classrooms and auditoriums at school
communication in the hallways, lunchroom, bathrooms, and locker room at school
access to communication on the school bus (especially during the dark fall & winter hours)
access to communication while in the backseat of my car
communication with his hearing siblings
siblings' resentment of the attention he gets
communication with his grandparents and extended family
lack of experience and naiveté
lack of role models
sense of entitlement
sense of disentitlement
fears
self-identity
frustration with the hearing world
frustration with the deaf world

Ok, I'll stop there. Even so, this is a trifling of the more comprehensive list any parent of a deaf or hard of hearing child could make. Every item singly or together propels a sense of urgency towards solution or resolution. From this constant race of realization/reaction, consideration/reconsideration, indecision/decision, failure/triumph, we move through our days. Until the days are up, and he is nineteen, and he has gone.

For me, the "fence" I didn't focus on through the fast-pace and weighty consequences of our lives was that this journey with him would end. There would be a stopping point where I could no longer see through to his side of life almost clearly. To stop down and stare at that eventuality in front of me was just incomprehensible; as much yearned for as dreaded. He would be off on his own sooner than I ever imagined, a separate human being in charge of his own destiny.

A boundary between us will now grow naturally from the many types of distances that separate parents from their autonomous, grown children. That's ok. I always thought Robert Frost made an excellent point of this in "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors."

My son has launched towards a new horizon, full speed ahead. He's so ready for it, even if I'm not. In retrospect, should we have focused on the fence or the life beyond it? Did the IEP and all my other worries matter? Well, absolutely yes, or maybe not at all. The only answer that really matters is his answer, not mine. I've come to realize that in the end, it's not just about the choices we made for our children, but how we fostered their ability to make the right choices for themselves, and then honored their choices.