How do deaf people juggle work and family?

I intended to write this article to share with you how fellow deaf and hard of hearing people cope with juggling work and family life. However, what I discovered was that my deaf friends and associates also struggle and had no specific resources to offer.

When I asked the question: “As a deaf parent, are there any tools or systems you use to make work/family life easier?” Their answer: “If there are such tools and systems, we haven’t found them.”

This got me thinking, what can I do to bridge this gap in knowledge and help my friends, as well as myself? I booted up my computer and started delving into discussion forms, research articles and news reports, intent on finding and sharing information that might alleviate some of the stressors associated with being deaf and trying to juggle work and family. Here’s what I found.

Work-life balance is defined as finding a balance between work, home, and family resulting in a feeling of increased fulfilment and satisfaction with life in general. A lack of work-life balance is associated with increased stress and fatigue. Thus, work-life balance is important for your well-being and the well-being of your family.

If you type “work-life balance” into Amazon search, it delivers a staggering 1400 book results. Now, try searching for “deaf people work-life balance”. Zero results. This is not a reflection on Amazon; I’m merely demonstrating that there is a profound lack of information on the subject.

It’s true that everyone, both deaf and hearing people, struggle to balance their professional life with their personal life. The literature shows that there are a number of ways you can improve your work-life balance. For example, making a list of your priorities, ranked by importance, and then organising your day-to-day tasks according to those priorities. That’s great advice and should be implemented.

Another work-life balance tip is to listen to audio books while driving to work, instead of reading them. Great advice and such a time saver. One problem. I’m deaf! I think you can relate to my frustration.

A 2003 work-life study performed in Sweden revealed that people with hearing loss felt exhausted more often after a regular working day than did hearing people. They also claimed to have less control over their work situation and were less satisfied with their work environment.

The employees with hearing loss felt they delivered good results at work, but that this was often at the cost of great fatigue, due to the high level of concentration required while working.

This study further highlights the importance of having and implementing strategies that can enhance increased control of your work situation. You must have access to some level of technical accommodation or support services designed to facilitate communication with your colleagues and management.

Living a balanced life has important implications for personal happiness. This is evident when reading some of the responses I received from my “how do deaf people juggle work and family” question sheet I sent to my deaf and hard-of-hearing friends.

Answer: After a long day at work lip-reading and making sense of communication, I often feel I have less patience and stamina to listen to both of my daughters’ high-pitched recount of their day. I have to ask them to slow down and speak in their “low voice”, and often I can’t keep up with the conversation.

Answer: Being unable to use the phone and not relax during work breaks because I can’t keep up with everything that’s being said, definitely contributes to stress. As a deaf person, you have to work three times harder to try and prove yourself.

Answer: Trying to communicate with my kids can be more of an effort, especially when I’m tired at the end of the day. Keeping to a schedule becomes even more important when you’re deaf. Otherwise, we don’t have any real strategies for bedtime.

Answer: It’s difficult, especially with children in school, you don’t have the usual support mechanism hearing people do. For example, when I’m stuck in traffic, I can’t just phone the school to let them know we’re running late.

All working parents experience challenges in finding work-life balance, even more so if they are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Maintaining paid employment while raising happy and healthy children may lead to stress, but with determination and a little help, you can lead a balanced life.

Access to Work deaf services (for those in the UK): You are just as important as any other employee in your company. See if you are eligible for funding to implement word-for-word captioning services and never again walk out of a meeting confused because you don’t know what was being said.

Flexibility: Ensure you vary your communication approach to adapt to specific situations and the importance of the message. Send emails to make sure your instructions are clearly understood and use one-to-one sessions if your usual communication tools are not available.

Sometimes flexibility means you need to be able to change strategies in midstream. For example, ask one of your hearing colleagues, who knows how to communicate with you, to assist with conversations where your normal tools and techniques have failed or were not available at that moment.

Share your ideas: Get to know the managers at your company and describe your ideas on how they can make communication more successful, especially during meetings. Try and meet with them individually, so they can get to know you and understand your specific needs.

Educate hearing people: Teach others about deafness and take the lead in creating the best possible environment. Hearing people are often willing to make adjustments, but they won’t if they don’t know that you need it and why it’s important.

Cultivate key informants: No one likes to be the last to know the office gossip or miss a joke. Forge relationships with key hearing persons who are sensitive and willing to share what they know with you and keep you in the information loop. Maintaining contact and positive ties with key informants can help you keep up with conversations.

Know your rights, but don’t be unrealistic: Be aware of when you’re pushy and alienating people while securing your rights. Find your balance between self-advocacy and alienating others. Don’t be afraid to speak up, but be diplomatic.

Clearly, define your stress management techniques

When faced with stress, families adopt strategies to cope and regain a level of normal functioning. These strategies need to be created before the stressor occurs. Get your family involved and create a plan of action, ensure all members know what’s expected of them and their role in the plan.

It’s important that you take time out when you start to feel your concentration lapsing or when you begin to feel stressed. Create and simplify your daily routines.

You need communication rules at home

Effective communication with your children is very important for their psychological development. According to a study done by Burns & Persons (2011), family communication is divided into three primary categories:

1. Joking around
2. Recapping the day’s events
3. Relationship talk

Keep these categories in mind when communicating with your children. Establish clear rules about how your hearing or non-hearing children should communicate effectively with you and vice versa. Ask them to share their ideas and work on establishing the rules together. For example, interrupting or talking over one another is not acceptable, a rule can be made to wait until a person has finished speaking before you start talking.

Get your family’s support. Schedule regular family weekends to discuss your current communication rules and if and how they can be adapted to be more effective.

Apps for communication

Examples of apps and tools you can use to communicate more effectively:

• Skype
• Aud 1: Modulates how sound is shaped in your listening environment.
• Capital: Making phone conversations accessible.
• RogerVoice: An app that converts voice to text on phone calls.
• HearYouNow: An app for hard-of-hearing people, it customises sound according to your specific needs, for example optimising foreground sound.

Alerting Systems

It might be worthwhile to install an app or purchase a technical device that alerts you to sounds or movements in your environment, especially when you have a teenager trying to sneak past you.

Alerting systems can also be used to notify you of your alarm clock going off, door knocks, baby monitors and smoke alarms. These systems usually alert you using lights, high-frequency sound and vibrating notifications.

• Serene Innovations CA-360 alerting system
• Central Alert Mini Notification System
• Safewake

I’ll leave you with my friend Maria’s advice.

I think the best advice I can give is that in spite of all the difficulties, the things that keep you going are lots of love and affection, sitting down and having a chat with your children and spouse, that’s the only thing that works really.

If you have any tips or can recommend any tools that have made your life as a fully employed deaf parent easier, please share in the comment section below.

Resources

Backenroth-Ohsako G.A.M., Wennberg P. & Klintberg B.A. (2003). “Personality and work life: A comparison between hearing-impaired persons and a normal-hearing population”. Social behaviour and personality journal. 31(2), p 191 – 204.

Todd, K. (2011). Children of deaf adults: An exclusive assessment of family communication. The University of West Florida.