Communication, Information, and Support for Swedish Parents with Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Children

Communication is an important but complicated issue for parents to deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Professionals have debated whether a DHH-child should have opportunity to learn spoken language, sign language, or a mixture of both. Two perspectives dominate: the medical (viewing deafness as a disability) vs. the cultural-lingual (viewing DHH-people as a cultural and linguistic minority). Parents have to handle these conflicting perspectives while they would need support and information about parenting a DHH-child. This article investigates preferred communication in the families, whether parents get information about STS, attend STS-courses, if parents get adequate support and information. 118 parents responded on a survey focusing on these issues, and the results show that spoken Swedish was preferred, but that STS or sign-supported Swedish often was used in parallel. Most parents without previous knowledge of DHH-people were satisfied with the information and support received, while parents with previous knowledge had negative experiences.