Madeleine never begun to "speak", she had her own language, which we had difficulty understanding.
We became worried and visited our child welfare centre, where they said that it could take some time for some kids to begin to speak.

In the meantime we got a letter of referral to Huddinge Hospital to have Madeleine’s tonsils removed. During this visit it was discovered that she had a profound hearing impairment. At that time she was 3 years old.

Until then we had not even been thinking that she might have a problem with her hearing and we could not understand how she had been able to understand us. Our audiologist explained that Madeleine had probably been a very good lip reader.

At first one gets disappointed and shocked over the fact that the child welfare centre didn’t discover the hearing impairment earlier. Along came also thoughts about how the future would be. How should she manage kindergarten, schools, friends, etc?

I also thought a lot about how Madeleine had been feeling during her 3 first years in life.

We got in contact with a doctor, social welfare officer and audiologist at Huddinge Hospital. We also got Madeleine into a special kindergarten for hearing impaired and deaf children. During this time we received great support from everybody.

The staff at Huddinge Hospital had the same reactions as we had and their view was that the hearing loss should have been discovered earlier, especially for the sake of Madeleine. Everybody has been giving us all the support that has been possible.

When we found out about Madeleine’s hearing loss it was the beginning of many changes for all of us. Madeleine began at a special kindergarten for hearing impaired and deaf children. To be able to get to this kindergarten she had to travel by school taxi, which we felt was very hard because she was so young. She got hearing aids, which she at the beginning refused to wear and when she wore them they were always misplaced. We had to learn sign language. We had to make many visits to doctors, audiologists and social welfare officers. Also, Madeleine had a hard time getting used to wearing the hearing aids.

At this time everything was very new. Today all of this is natural for her and she could not cope without her hearing aids. Everything today feels very normal. She is now at a special school for hearing-impaired children and she is not being looked upon as being different as everybody at the school wears hearing aids. She travels back and forth to school with the school taxi and she still finds that hard. At home she feels very lonely and it is difficult for her to get in contact with children without a hearing loss.

Our day-to-day life can sometimes be hard; we quite often have to repeat everything many times. Things sometimes have to be explained several times before Madeleine really understands. Furthermore, we still get a lot of thoughts and reflections from Madeleine i.e. why she is hearing impaired etc.

However, living with Madeleine’s hearing loss has brought our family closer together. We have developed an attitude of helping each other in every possible way.

I have also become more aware that many people today are hearing impaired and thanks to Madeleine I now show more consideration towards people with a hearing impairment.

Glenn Eklund - Sweden