When you are a child growing up with hearing loss, or the parent of a child who’s diagnosed with a hearing condition, you likely have lots of questions. What challenges will we face? Where can we find advice? Who else will understand?
Annabelle Jacobs, age 17, has made it her mission to answer these questions.
Her YouTube series, Hear for Hope, documents her experiences growing up with moderate to severe hearing loss in both ears. Her delivery is upbeat, candid, and as practical as it is inspiring. So far, she’s covered everything from lip reading to what it’s like having hearing aids around swimming pools. Notes are pouring in from families with requests for future topics, and thank-yous for the videos she’s already shared. “I feel like I am learning more and more about my 2 yr old through you!” one mom wrote in the comments section. “I hope my son can look to you as inspiration as he grows up,” wrote another.
“It feels really good to know that I can share my experiences, which seem so simple and normal to me, with people who really need to hear it,” says Annabelle. She’s a role model for kids with hearing loss: Believe in yourself – you can achieve things beyond imagination.
“Parents have told us, ‘This means everything to me,’” says Annabelle’s mom, Sallie Ann. “I get it, because when you first learn that your child has hearing loss, you do not know to expect.”
“Can this be fixed?”
Annabelle’s hearing loss was diagnosed at birth, after she failed a hearing test at the Massachusetts hospital where she was born.
“It was really shocking,” says Sallie Ann. “You’re told that your child will never learn to speak without hearing aids. We spent the first month or two at a loss.” She and husband Peter had a million questions, and concerns: “At first, we took her all up and down the East coast, asking, ‘Can this be fixed?’ One doctor finally said, ‘This is permanent. Your job is not to fix this. It’s to focus on having this beautiful baby.’”
So that’s what they did. Instead of fixing their daughter’s hearing loss, they focused on helping her thrive with it. By 3 months old, Annabelle had her first set of hearing aids, and Sallie Ann had gotten in the habit of talking to her constantly as she went about the day, narrating every action like a sports commentator. Sure enough, Annabelle started babbling. With the support of town-sponsored speech therapy, she started speaking. She learned to read lips.
When Annabelle was 5 years old, the family – which by then included Annabelle’s two younger brothers, Tate and Henry – moved to Connecticut. That’s when they found Connecticut Children’s Division of Audiology.
