Approximately ninety percent of deaf children have hearing parents. Pollard does not consider the ability to communicate through sign language a prerequisite for effective parenting of deaf children. However, he says, the sense of powerlessness parents might feel at the diagnosis of deafness, as well as the fear that they are incompetent to raise a deaf child, can affect the parent-child relationship. Children whose emotional needs are not being met by their family might be more vulnerable to perpetrators, who can take advantage of the child's desire for closeness, therapists suggest. I must be attractive to a hearing person.
Some therapists say yes.
Healthy parent-child relationships are determined by the mental health of the parents, she says. Deafness is not the issue but only a compounding factor along with other factors that apply to any child, hearing or deaf. A second issue therapists raise with reference to communication barriers concerns knowledge of sexuality. According to John M. Scanlan, MD., psychiatrist and consultant to Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, deaf children have fewer ways in which to learn about sexuality than hearing children. They do not, for example, overhear conversations and must rely heavily on what their parents and teachers tell them.