Do you discipline your child who deaf or hard of hearing any differently than your child who hears?
I don't think we discipline our deaf child any differently. Perhaps when he was very young he might have gotten away with something because of lack of understanding of what we expected, but that didn't last long.
No. We expected honesty, self-discipline and obedience from both of our children.
I try not to, but I catch myself being more lenient at times with my child who is deaf.
The discipline is the same. I won't let my deaf daughter go undisciplined for something that any other child would need to be disciplined for... I care about her future. And that involves making sure that she does not grow up spoiled or thinking that she can behave in a way that is socially unacceptable or do things that are wrong just because she is deaf. Deafness doesn't allow a child or person to have an excuse to behave badly.
I think we may be easier on her, but I think that is more because she is a girl, rather than because she is hard of hearing.
Because I sign with my child, it requires stopping everything in order to have my hands free to sign. It takes a lot of patience, but I think it has helped me do a better job with both of my children.
We worked really hard not to treat our child who is hard of hearing differently. However, since she couldn't be yelled at across the room, there were probably times when she escaped some of the verbal "discipline" the others got.
I would say that the answer to this question is yes. Our hearing children, because they have so much more vocabulary, can reason things out much better at a younger age than a deaf child can. They hear, 'No, you're going to get hurt if you do that,' or something similar to that, many times a day and after a while they know they'd better not do that. With our deaf child, again, because he didn't know the words, we had to make sure that we got the point across in a way that he could understand. That included using sign, mime, conveying in whatever way we could that what he was doing was wrong and why. It takes extreme patience and understanding in taking the time to explain.
I'd like to think the answer is no, but I know there have been times when I haven't disciplined my daughter for things I might have disciplined my hearing son for. Usually the reason was because I felt that she truly did not understand what she did wrong, and in that situation I felt it was more productive to teach her about why what she did was wrong rather than to just punish her.
