Abstract
Congenital hearing impairment has a negative effect on the social and communication skills in the majority of children. We compared the development of children with various levels of hearing loss who were supplied with hearing aids and children with cochlear implants and those with no hearing problems. We verified the hypothesis about the bidirectional dependency relationship between the tested variables: the influence of mothers’ anxiety on their hearing impaired children’s development and the influence of the children’s developmental level on the anxiety level of their mothers. The participants were 94 children aged 12 to 24 months with various levels of hearing loss corrected with hearing aids or cochlear implants as well as their mothers. The level of anxiety in mothers was assessed using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). A cause and effect relationship was shown between the child’s hearing loss and their development in the communicative area as well as in the social and emotional area. It was found that children with profound hearing impairment with a cochlear implant functioned better than the group of children with similar or lower hearing impairment using hearing aids. The mothers’ anxiety conditioned the child’s poorer development, and the child’s delayed development had an influence on increasing the anxiety level in mothers. The level of profoundness of hearing loss weakens communicative as well as social and emotional development of children. There exists a bidirectional relationship between mothers’ anxiety and their children’s development.
Highlights
IntroductionAccepting the fact of being a mother of a child with hearing loss is a difficult and long-term process
In post-hoc inter-group comparisons between individual groups, significant differences were found in the gross motor skills variable between the following groups of hearing loss in the child independent variable: cochlear implant (CI) vs. hearing aids (HA) (GMSCI = 100.42 ± 7.86; GMSHA = 81.78 ± 8.21), CI vs. MH (GMSCI = 100.42 ± 7.86; GMSMH = 88.10 ± 5.44), HA vs. efficient hearing (EH) (GMSHA = 81.78 ± 8.21; GMSEH = 100.60 ± 12.50) and MH vs. EH (GMSMH = 88.10 ± 5.44; GMSEH = 100.60 ± 12.50)
Children with efficient hearing (EH) and profound hearing loss with a cochlear implant (CI) belonged to groups presenting the best results in the considered variable
Summary
Accepting the fact of being a mother of a child with hearing loss is a difficult and long-term process At a given time, are incapable of accepting their child’s disability very often cannot accompany the child in their development and do not notice the child’s strengths, which realistically translates into the process of implementing hearing and speech rehabilitation (Pruszewicz and Sekula 1996). The use of an appropriate emotional and rehabilitation path is the turning point for the quality of life and an opportunity for the normal development of deaf child, which influences the mothers of a child with hearing loss: it reduces their anxiety and stress levels, motivates them to undertake rehabilitation and gives them the strength to overcome difficulties which may appear in the process (Dolgin et al 1990). We verified the hypothesis about the bidirectional emotional dependency manifested by the influence of mothers’ anxiety on their hearing impaired children’s development and the influence of the children’s developmental level on the anxiety level of their mothers
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