All About Trauma-Informed Practice – Episode 37 with Colleen Wilkinson All About Audiology - Hearing Resources to Empower YOU

Welcome back to The All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. And this episode is really truly from my heart. Coming to you guys, to my listeners, it’s a topic that’s really, really important to me and something that really propelled me into making this podcast. And the more and more we’re continuing with interviews, more and more guests come on the show, the more I interact with you guys, I see that the original message that I wanted to come and put out in the world is really something that’s very, very necessary. And that is that, this is hard, this journey, hearing loss, learning all about audiology, making really big decisions for your child is not an easy topic. It’s something that really has to be given weight and really has to be taken seriously.







And something that I was noticing throughout my studies and throughout my work was that there was a lot of emphasis and focus on doing the interventions, doing the treatments, getting the hearing aids, programming them and, many hours of speech therapy, or deciding to do the cochlear implant surgery… And then boom, boom, boom, like action, action action, which obviously is fabulous and very necessary. And there wasn’t quite as much urgency and attention given, almost at all, to the emotional processing of the family to the news of the hearing loss, specifically to the parents, who may have really been totally caught off guard by this diagnosis or not. Whatever it is that the experience of the parents is, it wasn’t being properly addressed.







And it’s really the perspective that I wanted to bring to this, to the all about audiology project, to this whole community, is that we really do need to care for ourselves as parents, where audiologists do really need to take into account the parents’ reaction, the parents’ readiness, the available resources, in all the ways that that means. Financial and time and emotional attend to the needs that now have presented themselves with this diagnosis, and also to the entire process of grieving, of being in denial, of accepting the news, of going into action, of becoming advocates; this whole journey that twists and turns and winds back and comes back around. It’s really something that is, I feel, a very big message, a very big mission for me to make room for that and make space for that within the community of families who are navigating hearing loss.







In Episode 31, I interviewed Mama Manon, who is a French teacher and gives parenting workshops where her entire approach is coming from addressing our children and connecting with our children from a body level. How do our bodies feel in different circumstances, what is that gnawing in my stomach or that fluttering in my chest? Am I listening to those cues? Am I paying attention to my body and then also making room to connect with what our child’s bodily experience is? Like if they’re flailing around if they’re unable to regulate their bodies and all of that. So, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to Episode 31, I highly recommend you go back. And then in Episode 33, I interviewed Dr. Julie Renshaw, and we talked a lot about the experience of the diagnosis in the context of the equipment that we use, so it was kind of a technical episode and something that I’m always trying to do is make a balance with these episodes so that y...