I felt lost.
In that first month of Ethan's life, we lived with the possibility that he did not have the ability to hear in one ear. He failed the initial hearing tests in his right ear, and all we had in front of us was another test the day after Thanksgiving to confirm what we knew was likely, our child had a disability. When it was confirmed that he had conductive non-sensorineural unilateral hearing loss in the right ear a couple of weeks later in December, it was a relief.
We finally had a name for this thing that we had been worried about every single day of his life. While this felt like an affirmation of our concerns, it left more worries and anxiety in its wake. There were so many questions in my mind. Would we have to learn sign language? Can this be fixed with surgery? How do we raise a child who can only functionally hear out of one ear? What do we have to do to help this baby love himself and know that he is loved with this disability?
Soon after we got the results from Ethan's hearing test, we got a letter in the mail about how Ethan qualified for Early Intervention. This government program gave us hope, forever changed our lives, and dramatically affected the development of Ethan's hearing and speech abilities that forever changed the trajectory of his life for the better.
When the program was first laid out to us in our first meeting with our Early Intervention case worker when Ethan was two months old, I was skeptical. They were going to send a therapist to come to our house and do sessions? How good could this be?
I thought at the time, "if the service in the DMV is any indicator, this is not going to go well."
I was wrong, so wrong.
People like to complain about how things run by the government are mediocre. We've all heard people talk about how the lines are too long at the Post Office and how the Department of Motor Vehicles is the worst. I literally laughed out loud when I watched this scene for the first time.
I wonder though, how this makes people feel who work hard at the DMV to make the roads safer. This depiction isn't fair.
Some rant about how public schools are horrible and how the welfare system is mismanaged. Many of these complaints reflect real, systemic issues in our society like the racism at the foundation of our police force, which leads to murders of Black and brown Americans regularly.
Other complaints reflect a level of privilege and/or a lack of perspective. People are willing to wait in the grocery store to check out but, for some reason, feel like they shouldn't have to wait at the post office. Yes, there are horrible public schools, but there are great public schools out there too. On rare occasions, people exploit the welfare system, but far more rely on this program, albeit flawed, on getting through each day.
There are government programs and agencies that fail and need to do better, and many do a great job. The myth that anything run by the government is bad is destructive, wrong, and needs to be privatized is racist. Just think about how our jail system's privatization continues to put Black and brown people in jail at an alarming rate.
I'm a critic of our government as all citizens should be, and the solution to solving the problems I see is to make the government better, not smaller. Because there is so much good in what our government does that should be built upon and kept whole.
I believe this more than ever now that we are on the other side of Early Intervention. This program showed us the way, gave us the tools to move forward, and changed how I thought about the government, myself as a parent, and my son Ethan.
Though it didn't start off great with that first therapist...
No comments:
Post a Comment