PIC/Family Voices Podcast Episode 22: Discover Hands & Voices NH: Supporting Deaf and Hard of Hearing Families

Lauren Martone (00:02.292)
In this episode, we’re joined by representatives from Hands and Voices, New Hampshire, to talk about the power of parent driven support, advocacy, connection, and the resources available to families across New Hampshire to support them in raising children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Hands and Voices is dedicated to supporting families with children who are deaf or hard of hearing without bias around communication modes or methodology.
 
They are a parent-driven, nonprofit organization providing families with the resources, networks, and information they need to improve communication access and educational outcomes for their children. Today’s guests will be Sarah Ortiz Davitt, President of New Hampshire Hands and Voices, and Sarah McFarland. Sarah Ortiz Davitt is a mother, and pediatric occupational therapist with 18 years of experience. After spending over a decade in early intervention in school-based programs in California, she returned home to New Hampshire in 2019 to continue her work. Sarah’s professional toolkit took on a deeply personal meaning when her son Lucas was born and developmental delays were suspected. Lucas was just about to turn three when his family faced the conclusion of a long road that finally led to his official diagnosis of being deaf. Then, just as the family found those critical answers, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Her family utilizes a robust, multi model communication approach for her son, who now has bilateral cochlear implants. 

Sarah McFarland is a program manager with an au pair agency.  She supports families and au pairs through their cultural exchange together. Sarah’s daughter May was born profoundly deaf and received her cochlear implant at 10 months old through Boston Children’s Hospital. The whole family, including grandparents, are learning ASL. May also utilizes a speech therapist to learn spoken language. I am your host, Lauren Martone, a family school partnership facilitator at the Parent Information Center and mother of two children, one with disabilities. Welcome, Sarah and Sarah.
 
Sarah McFarland (02:31.003)
Thank you. Nice be here.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (02:32.362)
Yeah, thank you for having us.
 
Lauren Martone (02:36.128)
Let’s get started. What has been your personal journey with your child’s hearing loss?
 
Sarah McFarland (02:43.989)
So because I’m sure this will be confusing, this is Sarah M. Ours started when May didn’t pass her newborn hearing screening in the hospital. I had a very long labor and then an emergency C section, and then she finally welcomed into the world. When she did not pass the newborn screening in the hospital, we got the typical answer of, it’s probably just fluid. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. We’ll schedule your follow-up appointment. and you’ll figure out things from there. So we didn’t think much of it. And we were just focused on having a newborn baby until we finally had our follow-up appointment when she was almost two months old, I believe.
 
We our first ABR, which is like the official test that babies and children go through to actually get their official diagnosis of hearing loss. The first one, our first appointment was not with a pediatric audiologist, which I think was our first mistake, and obviously not knowing this world yet. We just went with whatever the hospital booked for us. And for the ABR, you have to get your baby to sleep.
 
And the room that they put us in was very bright, very cold. And I sat in a hard plastic chair while trying to rock my newborn baby to sleep. So clearly she did not sleep long enough for us to actually get the full test done. But they did tell us then that they were seeing levels of hearing loss in both ears. They scheduled a follow-up hearing test, but that was for three months after.
 
Which again, I did not know any of the kind of benchmarks we try to hit in the early years of discovering if your child has hearing loss. and that day was very interesting because it was also the day I was moving from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. So we weren’t really suspecting her to have hearing loss. So we went to this appointment thinking, just something I gotta check off the list, then we’ll go finish boxing up the house and head on home. So once we loaded our last car full of boxes, I called my mom crying, telling her that I think my daughter’s deaf. And she basically was like, until you get a real pediatric audiologist’s input on this, take it with a grain of salt. So she told me that I should really just reach out to Boston Children’s and figure out if we can get a second opinion. So I called them.
 
Sarah McFarland (05:32.078)
They literally got us in the next week. Totally different experience. We got put in a very comfortable dark room. They brought heated blankets to help us swaddle her and make sure that she was really nice and comfy, and she slept good for her first ABR test. So our audiologist there, Ashley, that we work with, has been a really great help. She helped point us in the direction of, you know, New Hampshire’s supports, because I did get a little bit lost in the early hearing detection intervention, the Eddie program, because I moved states during her diagnoses, so she really helped us, gave us encouragement, made sure that we were connected with other families.
 
And yeah, once we moved and I came to terms with my daughter’s hearing loss, I’m not one to sit around and do nothing. So I jumped into gear and tried to problem solve and started to make referrals to early intervention, found northeastern deaf and hard of hearing services to figure out what family support might look like through them. I was able to work with them to contract a CVT therapist, which is a specialized speech therapist that helps with children who have cochlear implants. we started our family sign language program. All of the grandparents join. It’s really wonderful, and then eventually we got to the point of her actual surgery. So now she has bimodal cochlear implants. So she has two of them one on each side.
 
She’s doing fantastic with them. She really loves them. She gets sad every night when we take them off, and yeah, she’s doing great. She’s about to start preschool in the fall at the Signs of Learning in Nashua, which is a specialized preschool for children with hearing loss, but yeah, she’s speaking, signing, dancing, singing. She’s wonderful. We’re obsessed with her.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (07:39.941)
This is this is now Sarah D. It’s so interesting to always hear everybody’s journeys. There’s so many similarities as well as like differences. For me, I felt as though our journey was pretty complicated from day one, as if having a newborn placed in your arms isn’t complicated enough.
 
But Lucas was born in California in 2017, and he failed his initial newborn hearing screening. And a few days later I had to go back to the hospital where they were able to do it, and they handed us paperwork saying, Hey, he passed, it’s fine. This is a very common thing that you know is typical for babies to not pass their first one. And so you know, I really didn’t that kind of muted my alarm buzzers in my brain. And as the months went on through his development, we both had this persistent feeling that something wasn’t right. It’s hard, even with a background as an OT, it’s just completely different when it’s your own child. But we were noticing general motor delays and moments where he’d be staring off into space and he just wasn’t engaging and responding the way that you would expect an infant to. So I kept bringing him back to his pediatrician, but time and time again I was just dismissed as you know an over anxious mom. You might hear him in the background a little bit. He does not want to leave my side right now. So he’s right behind me. But I would be sent away and just told to relax and enjoy my baby, and because of that, what really ended up happening is Lucas ended up starting early intervention services because of his general motor delays, before anyone was willing to investigate our concerns about his hearing. When we finally did get a doctor to listen, Lucas, it was after his first birthday and then it we got thrown into this really daunting sort of medical maze where we had to go to an ENT and then they did ear tubes, and then we had to wait for the healing of the ear tubes, and then after that he failed a hearing test, and so then they wanted to do more specialized hearing tests, and we were trapped kind of in this HMO maze where you had to wait for approvals and it took four weeks for the insurance company to say yes. And then sometimes they said no and they had to provide extra, you know, justification for the things that we needed to be done. I would have to say that like by the time we were, you know, well past the healing stage of ear tubes, I’d lost my bearings and trust in the process because it was so overwhelming.
 
We had grown up on the East Coast, so we decided to just bypass the local system in California and bring Lucas to Boston and move to New England, hoping that, you know, at Boston we could find a collaborative team that could help us put the missing pieces together, and we were able to when we moved to New England or enroll Lucas in early intervention and by chance his early interventionist was deaf. So that was the first time that I felt just really validated and listened to. We didn’t have a diagnosis yet, so we couldn’t access any services like the family sign language program or anything because we didn’t even have you know our official diagnosis and we finally got that diagnosis, probably around December when Lucas was like two and a half, and as soon as we were trying to process that answer and get through the things we needed to start our support with Northeast Deaf and Hard of hearing the pandemic hit and everything shut down and all the services that we needed stopped. That was the moment that, you know, I felt very isolated.
 
But I also found a lot of that I had a lot of time on my hands. So I dove into the Facebook community, YouTube, trying to learn anything and everything that we could to help him. And by the time everything began rolling again, I found myself well networked in like a national deaf and hard of hearing community. I was talking to people just across the country.
 
After Lucas was able to get his cochlear implants, he then attended the program in Nashua. And eventually the decision was made that their program couldn’t meet his needs, and since then it’s begun it still feels a little tricky. But currently we’re working with our local SAU and NDHS to create something that works for Lucas. So you know, our journey is ongoing. I mean, there’s even more in there. Like he got one cochlear implant at a time. So I just try to remind myself to stay energized as I as I watch Lucas grow because you know he makes so many great games despite every setback that we hit along with.
 
Lauren Martone (13:39.99)
Thank you both so much for sharing your personal experience. One of you had mentioned how hearing everybody’s journey is so important because you feel those connections, but then you’re also reminded of the differences and the individuality of each journey. So thank you. You both had mentioned cochlear implants for your kiddos.
 
If you could each tell us a little bit more about what modalities for communication and hearing technology your families use. Sarah D.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (14:15.946)
Yeah, sure. Lucas has bilateral cochlear implants. He has the I think it’s the nucleus. It’s not the like latest, newest version of the nucleus, but it’s fairly new, a couple years old, new. and we because of our situation, we’ve embraced a combination of American Sign Language. My sister in law is basically like beginnerish fluent, and signed English for a lot of other people, you know, who are learning signs, but it it’s complex for them to just learn the grammatical way to use it. And then you know, spoken language and we also rely on a strong use of visuals just to help Lucas navigate his routines, and he really benefits from that combination of things. He also communicates with a mixture of everything that we use, and we found that being open to you know really following Lucas’ lead. He’s really shown us what’s most beneficial for him.
 
Lauren Martone (15:31.069)
Thank you. And Sarah M.
 
Sarah McFarland (15:34.085)
Yeah, so May also has two cochlear implants, also nucleus. She has the N eights. She was implanted with one when she was ten months, and then the next right before she turned one. She does great with them while she’s wearing them. She has access to about twenty decibels of hearing, which is about a whisper. So for someone that was born profoundly deaf, that feels very incredible that this technology allows that much access to sound. When she’s wearing them, she uses spoken language and ASL. When they’re off, she talks nonstop still, but we sign back to her so she still knows what’s going on. Like Sarah was saying, it’s mostly like signed exact English because we’re not fully fluent and we don’t necessarily know the grammatical structures of ASL.
 
Sarah McFarland (16:31.886)
But she gets what we’re saying and we communicate well. But really our goal through this entire journey is to give her access to as many tools as possible to allow her to make her own decisions on technology and language modalities as she gets older. So making sure she has access to sign language so that way if she decides, hey, I don’t want to use my cochlear implant, she is still able to be fully immersed in the deaf and hard of hearing community and still flourish and have a beautiful life in that.
 
Lauren Martone (16:53.941)
I think it’s very powerful to start at such a young age with your children to give them that ability to advocate for themselves and what they feel works best as they grow. So kudos to you guys for that.
 
Sarah McFarland (17:16.72)
It’s a big decision to make for a child that can’t make that decision themselves.
 
Lauren Martone (17:23.165)
It’s I feel like sometimes with a child with disabilities, it feels like you’re holding literally their whole life in your hands when you’re making these decisions and it is a lot of weight to carry.
 
 Sarah McFarland (17:34.096)
 Truly.

Lauren Martone (17:23.165)
What would you both say to a family who just learned that their child has hearing loss? 
 
Sarah McFarland (17:45.463)
Yeah. I love this question because I think this is what helped me the most when we first got May’s diagnosis was being able to connect with other parents and moms and seeing how their children are doing. But I would tell them that I barely even think about May’s hearing loss now. it felt truly all encompassing at the beginning of our journey.
 
Many mornings crying, holding my baby, mourning a loss of a life I thought May wouldn’t be able to have. But I was extremely wrong. I should have never doubted this kid. Now that she just turned three, she sings, she jokes, she has lots of inside jokes, this kid. She just danced in her first recital and loved it, immediately wanted to get back on stage.
 
She talks back to us like a normal three year old. She even points out when she farts, which I think is the funniest thing in the world but really her hearing loss has not stopped her from doing anything in life. And I think as long as you find your community and your people and your supports, everything feels a lot lighter than they do in those early days.
 
Lauren Martone (19:06.911)
Thank you.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (19:07.043)
Yeah. I agree with that, Sarah. It’s hard. I would have so much I have so much to say to, you know, parents who are facing the initial news, you know, but I think, you know, summing it up, the first thing that I would tell them is just to take a deep breath and know, you know, right now that you know they’re not alone. You’re not alone. It’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed and isolated and like Sarah M. was mentioning, even heartbroken, you know, right now because you’re mourning what you thought it was going to be. Your world is just shifted. So it is okay to grieve that path that you thought that you were on.
 
But there is, you know, a community available and ready and wanting to support you. There are people who are in the trenches and in, you know, a movement to lift up you and your child. You know, I found my lifeline in grassroots Facebook groups during a pandemic where, you know, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, and things around ASL and a deaf children all of a sudden blew up on my YouTube, and the deaf and hard of hearing community was amazing in reaching out to me on Facebook and messaging me, and really I would tell them to just find organizations like Hands and Voices and really put effort into surrounding yourself with the people who will make you feel seen and validated because there is a village that’s waiting to support you and your family, and I think beginning there helps the rest of the journey and what feels like such a heavy, heavy burden feel lighter, and it gives you that hope, you know, that things are going to be, you know, good and okay for your child. That hope is really strong and it’s the most important thing because you know our kids do find enjoyment out of life and they develop personalities and there are so many hilarious things about you know Lucas and just having a deaf child, his facial expressions being one of them. It’s so fun and I’ve derived a lot of enjoyment from it.
 
Lauren Martone (21:57.398)
What do you wish you knew to ask in the early stages of the hearing loss journey?
 
Sarah McFarland (22:08.938)
I wish I knew to ask for more resources. I wish I knew what those resources even looked like because I got so lost in the Eddie program that no one really knew how to help me. I had to help myself. I wish I knew to seek out community and support from those very first moments. You know, in those moments it’s usually hearing parents when they have their baby with hearing loss that’s the first deaf person they’re meeting. So you know nothing about this world and this community and what’s out there for them. So you know, you’re not miraculously going to be instilled with all of that knowledge, but if only.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (23:00.304)
Yeah, for me, it’s hard. I reflect on it a lot and I’m just I ask so many questions that I actually think I annoyed a lot of professionals and people, because I can’t stop asking questions. I think though that I wish I had trusted in my instincts. You know, when I was turned away from that pediatrician time and time again, you know, it still never felt right. And I felt, you know, I would talk myself out of it and just kind of say, you know, he’s the doctor. He knows what he’s talking about. He sees children all the time. I am, I just I’m a postpartum mom. I need to just enjoy my child. and, you know, quite honestly, it is an acceptable thing to reject a professional and their opinion, especially when it doesn’t feel right. Because parents, we know our children the best. You know, you know your child the best. And those instinctual gut feelings are pivotal in a journey where you know you don’t even really know where you’re stepping. I wish that I knew that I could have given myself permission to be even more persistent and to disagree in the office and push further when I wasn’t satisfied with the answer, you know, that that would have been okay to get a second, third opinion would have been okay. You know, you can keep pursuing what you feel isn’t, you know, right. So I wish that I just given myself permission to do that.
 
Lauren Martone (24:55.571)
I think that this is so important, and I thank you both for pointing it out that our instincts as parents are so in tune with our children. And we’re often taught to doubt them. But if we trust them, they often will just take us in the right direction. I also think the grief that comes with accepting a disability in a diagnosis sometimes is also so important to acknowledge.
 
You know, part of that grief stage is regret and we wish we had done things different and it’s important for us to acknowledge and validate those feelings for one another.
 
Can you both tell us why did you join Hands and Voices?
 
Sarah McFarland (25:39.186)
So I found Hands and Voices through my search of just trying to find resources. It wasn’t the most active group in New Hampshire when I first found them. But I still joined with the goal of giving May another tool that she could use throughout her own hearing loss journey. We knew it was really important that she had access to the deaf community and she knew other kids who were deaf who used the same technologies that she did, that share a language. and we knew that that would be really helpful in helping her build her own proud deaf identity, which I think is one of the biggest tools that she can have in life. Both Sarah and I were I think we responded to a post in the group asking for more parental support, and then we hopped on a Zoom call with one of the chapter leaders for Central Hands and Voices and were both immediately given president titles and said, the reins are yours, but I think we’ve really done a good job hitting the ground running and getting the group kind of back into business, and I know I’m really proud to represent the parents in this community.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (27:01.7)
Yeah, I was able to I was lucky to be able to experience a little bit of Hands and Voices before the pandemic. We’ve had to reestablish, you know, who we are as a group. It did break up a little bit and realistically speaking, it was understandable. My experience with them was we went in, I brought Lucas there and we did a shared reading where Lucas was off it it was Christmas cookie decorating I remember that there were a lot of people and then my dad came with me and we’re learning how to read if you give a mouse a cookie in ASL which was a blast. I believe it was in collaboration with Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing when I went and Hands and Voices talking to the parents, you know, I was able to do during the pandemic a couple of meetings where we were just talking about our journeys. And that was part of what began to shift my perspective for the future outlook of what I as a caregiver would be facing with my son. At that point in time, having that journey, having that community of people on a common journey or who had even were further ahead. Really felt stabilizing for me. In all of this, I’ve found that the community in New Hampshire, you know, typically seems to be broken up between the surrounding states. People go, you know, to Massachusetts. There’s so many great resources. There’s Boston, there’s a few deaf schools there, and then in Maine, same thing there, is I believe there’s a deaf school up there in Portland. Don’t quote me on that one. I think so though. And then they have also have a lot of really great resources. And so you know what often happens in New Hampshire, there’s children who are deaf and hard of hearing, they can’t go to Nashua, right? So they commute to Beverly or they commute to Portland or they’re sent off to, you know, boarding school ’cause that’s appropriate for them.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (29:22.955)
But when your child is going up to Maine or down to Massachusetts, whether it’s for appointments or school, resources or other resources living in New Hampshire can ultimately feel a little bit isolating, which is why Hands and Voices was important for me, because traveling state to state isn’t necessarily something that everybody can do. And inevitably when I saw that Facebook post, that’s why I joined. I’m pretty goal oriented and mission minded. And, you know, I think that we can do a better job of creating a community that meets the needs of our children, you know, locally in our state, but you know, it it’s it starts it starts here, right? So and it begins by having a community and events here and people need to do that. So Sarah and I are we’re definitely on the same page.
 
Lauren Martone (30:24.125)
Can one of you tell us what is the mission and purpose of Hands and Voices?
 
Sarah McFarland (30:31.031)
The mission of Hands and Voices is to provide support, build community, and offer resources for families of deaf and hard of hearing children. Our goal is to have no biases on modalities or language methodologies, and to just provide support where we can.
 
Lauren Martone (30:52.191)
What value does hands and voices add to the New Hampshire Deaf and Hard of Hearing community?
 

Sarah McFarland (31:00.729)
I think we can still add more value as we continue to grow, but I think our current value is creating community events and giving parents the opportunity to meet each other and just having another parent that like gets it, that has walked a similar journey to your family. I think it’s also really beneficial to be able to get families together with children of varying ages so those families in the early stages can see how amazing their children will have the opportunity to be.
 

Sara Ortiz-Davitt (31:35.944)
Yeah, I agree with Sarah. Becoming a parent’s life changing and becoming a parent of a deaf or hard of hearing child just adds a little extra seasoning into the experience. So you know, at the core of Hands and Voices, we bring unconditional support free of any judgment to the modalities that families choose or you know their chosen language path when a family receives a diagnosis there is sometimes this primary overwhelming pressure to choose like a single rigid communication path or you know you’re either going to have a completely deaf child or you know, you’re going to have cochlear implants and just go completely that way, and what’s nice and the value that we can add to the community is you know the value of promoting that what works for your child is what’s best for your child. What works for your child is right for your child and the group of us, you know, stand firmly in supporting parents that make decisions that work for their children without bias and without judgment. and then providing resources and encouragement on their journey towards doing that. So whether a family chooses ASL or cochlear implants or a big mix of everything, we are the community and organization that can support them.
 
Lauren Martone (33:23.623)
So important. What goals does New Hampshire Hands and Voices have, and how can the community get involved?
 
Sarah McFarland (33:34.161)
So right now our goal is to grow. We want to be able to reach more families all across the state. New Hampshire may feel small, but we’re long and tall. So some of our families are three, four hours away from, you know, what feels like the kind of central community of Nashua being the only deaf and hard of hearing school in the state.
 
But we need our community to help us spread the word, you know, maybe offer donations, not just monetary, but we will happily take donations in the form of time or expertise. We would love help in creating more opportunities to host events, meetups, offer educational opportunities. and I know Sarah and I’s kind of dream goal is to offer a day camp for families to come and learn and connect and build a very fun community.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (34:40.396)
Yeah, what Sarah M said. Ultimately, you know, we are working to bring our community together so can share and pull our collective experiences and resources. We want to reduce the isolation and confusion around navigating the systems of services for families who have deaf and hard of hearing children. and I just want to add in here so you know we’re intentionally clear that this means deaf and hard of hearing plus. So other diagnosis is on top of that. We’re here for them too. It’s hard, you know, it’s a hard truth that systems take a lot of time to change and they’re not necessarily aware that where there is a gap until the need explicitly expresses itself, and isolation is quiet. So by doing these events and getting our community and the state together, it makes, you know, us unified and that becomes the forefront of intervention, a collective voice that can clearly identify what is lacking and exactly what will benefit our deaf and part of hearing children living in New Hampshire the most.
 
Especially when it comes to their development and access to their chosen language and the education that works and that is appropriate and right for them.
 
Lauren Martone (36:13.433)
You both mentioned events. What events do you have coming up and how and where can the community find you?
 
Sarah McFarland (36:21.844)
Our next event is just a few weeks away, depending on when this podcast comes out. But it will be in conjunction with NDHS. is going to be up in North Conway. So those of you up in North Country, we’re coming to you. It is on August 22nd at Schuler Park. It is just a playground meetup. We usually have a book that we learned to sign together, and just an opportunity for the parents to connect with the kids to all play together. You can find more information about that on our Facebook group or on NDHS’s Facebook or website. You can find our community most easily on Facebook right now. That is where we’re most active.
 
We’re working on making ourselves more accessible through our website. However, that is something we are still working on. But we do have plans to begin meeting a few times during the year via the internet. So some Zoom meetings, some things like that. So there are parents who cannot make it to a playgroup. There will still be ways to access the community and this year we will be planning several more play groups.
 
One being a pumpkin painting in the fall. We did that last year as well and the year before. but last year I think we had what close to twenty families join us. It was a really fun, large event. Yeah. It’s awesome.
 
 Sara Ortiz-Davitt (37:48.499)
 It was a big event. Yeah. It was great.
 
 Lauren Martone (37:54.396)
And before we wrap, we’ve talked a little bit about early supports and services and kind of more of the early years, but how can New Hampshire Hands and Voices support families in navigating their child’s education and the IEP process?
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (38:15.668)
I guess I will I’ll take this one first, I think. Lucas is older. So he’s going to be nine. We’re quite involved in an IEP process, two triennials in, and the New Hampshire Hands and Voices community essentially is able to help parents navigate the IEP process through providing unbiased peer support, staying true to our mission, that we support all communication options. We can support parents in the most child-centered way with a community of collective experiences. We can learn from one another and support each other in developing strategies for strong self-advocacy.
 
We can have conversations about the importance of the language that’s used in an IEP document. We can help parents understand the process and the timelines and the importance of those and how they’re used and there are particular things relating to having a deaf and hard-of-hearing child that can be easily overlooked when developing an IEP for a deaf and hard-of-hearing child.
 
Such as access to their communication and access to the modalities and chosen language that they use. I’ve been in meetings where there have been professionals who have inquired about, you know, well, why does he need ASL when you chose cochlear implants? And you don’t know ASL, you know, you use spoken language, so why does he need it? and it can feel really frustrating. So having a community reminds me as a parent to put on my compassionate lens, but also, you know, still be their advocate and remind myself that five years ago I had no idea how I was going to get my deaf child, you know, through school, and yeah, even though I still wanted to crawl through a computer and scream, the parents and caregivers, you know, like support helps you not to do that, but also, you know, it helps you realize that we have a unique and important role for our children to be a strong team player while our child’s IEP is being developed. We are the ones that are there to give parents the knowledge that we have to advocate for measuring and monitoring and prioritizing very certain components that impact our child’s access to an appropriate education. These factors can be measuring their listening skills, auditory processing, pragmatic language. It can be shining a light on the need for considering what the impacts are of a noisy classroom for child wearing devices. We’re talking about environmental modifications, amplification systems, educational audiology, interpreters versus language facilitators, implementing listening breaks, how to observe and identify auditory fatigue. Even, you know, how you know what is deaf culture and why is it important for a child school community to understand?
 
Just because I’m an OT, I also have to, you know, shine a light on unique sensory regulation needs that, you know, deaf and hard of hearing children have. And how do we provide tools and strategies for their relief and regulation throughout their school day? Those are all things that New Hampshire Hands and Voices can help parents talk about and find the language around so we can appropriately be the team player that we need to be in those IEP meetings because it can be emotional and intimidating. And it’s, you know, difficult to find the language and also remain compassionate in the face of many who don’t understand, you know, the challenges. We’re working with professionals who may have never had a deaf and hard of hearing child. You know, but are educators, you know, so we’re there to help parents be that same player who can help their, you know, child’s IEP team along.
 
Sarah McFarland (43:10.52)
I wanna add to that we can also help with your IFSP when your child is still in early intervention. I know I had to fight my local early intervention team a lot because they were really focusing on one method of communication, which is not the approach our family wanted to take at all. So yeah, it only happened by having a strong support system reaching out and showing them how important it is that she has multiple paths in life.
 
So we’re happy to talk that through that with you as well. And also the main Hands and Voices website has so many resources on preparing for your IEP meetings. There’s guides, there’s questions to ask, there’s videos you can watch. There’s a lot. we’re also pretty close to the educational advocates in New Hampshire. So we’re happy to connect you with them too if you want to have a professional come and sit with you through these IEP meetings.
 
 Lauren Martone (44:02.814)
 Okay.
 
 Sarah McFarland (44:09.476)
 Says a mom who’s had one IEP meeting.
 
Lauren Martone (44:13.622)
Thank you both very much. I appreciate the robust and open conversation, the sharing of your experiences. I can say that Lucas and May are so lucky to have you both as their moms out there advocating and opening their worlds for them. And the New Hampshire Deaf and Hard of Hearing community is certainly lucky to have you helping build and create a community for these families. So thank you both for being here and participating in this.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (44:47.229)
Thank you for having us.
 
Sarah McFarland (44:48.728)
Yeah, thank you. This was really great to be able to share stories and highlight Hands and Voices. We hope to see you all soon.
 
Lauren Martone (44:57.054)
We’ll make sure to include some of the resources that we’ve mentioned throughout the podcast, Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, the Hands and Voices website, Parent Information Center, and anything else that you would like us to link, we can work on that, having that in there.
 
Sara Ortiz-Davitt (45:15.841)
Sounds great.