Winter wants to go to a deaf school

My name is Aimee, and I’m mum to Winter (8) who has sloping severe hearing loss in both ears. She also has a speech disorder.

Winter wears hearing aids in both ears. We call them her ‘ears' (original, I know). She’s also 1 of 5 siblings, but luckily for her, she's the middle child so gets the attention of everyone. We have deafness in our family and have always known that Winter had some degree of hearing loss, we just didn’t know how much.

Winter has been let down by so many professionals, from speech and language to ENT, and now the local authority's decision with what school she attends. Winter has been under speech and language therapy (SALT) since she was 2 as she didn't make a noise. They had the nerve to say it was our fault and that she was lazy.

The hospital said she had glue ear and that it would all correct itself. She was given her ‘ears’, and when I asked how long she would need them, they said the rest of her life. Obviously, I was not happy with this, and we asked for her care to be transferred to another hospital where we were then told that Winter was deaf. We had always said from birth we knew our daughter was deaf.

We as a family started signing, and she was doing amazing, but then she started school and we were told to stop signing. This was all before we had it confirmed she was deaf. Now, Winter refuses to sign because she doesn't want people to laugh at her. However, we do try and sign at home.

We have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) in place, which is great, but the local authority didn’t take Winter’s feelings into their decision. Winter likes her school but doesn’t feel she belongs there, so she has stated that she wanted to go to a school for deaf children where she will get the SALT she needs, support to develop her positive deaf identity, and more importantly, a place where she feels she fits in.

All we as parents have ever wanted is for our children to be happy in everything, from being at home to being in school. Like all parents, our children come first, but what really gets me is how there are some professionals out there that think they know our children better than us.

She comes home daily and says how she’s fallen out with friends because they can’t understand what she’s trying to say or she’s misheard what they’ve said. As I’m sure you can guess, her school doesn’t really understand deafness.

We took Winter to look around a school for deaf children, and she became a different child. The confidence she had was amazing, and the first thing she said was, 'The children are like me.'

We are now in a battle with our local authority to change from a mainstream school to a school for deaf children. She’s just a little girl who knows what she wants. Winter also has amazing support from the people at the National Deaf Children's Society, and I personally can’t thank them all enough.

My advice to anyone in a similar situation is, don’t give up! You know your child more than the professionals and the local authority. It’s a long, hard battle, but our children deserve everything. As Winter would say, 'Why should I be pushed into a hearing world when they don’t want to understand?'