2.8 THE CHILD’S DEAFNESS AND THE EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING
2.8.1 Emotional well-being
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Kricos (2000: 285) states that grandparents may become anxious about their own child’s ability to cope with the increased responsibilities. Vadasy et al. (in Kricos, 2000: 285) found that nearly half of the grandparents in their study continued to experience feelings of sadness long after the initial diagnosis. Meadow (in Ross et al., 2004: 161) states that grandparents may interact with deaf children in a positive or negative manner. If the deaf child is the first grandchild they may experience disappointment and grief, as their attempts to realise their own unfulfilled dreams for their children through their grandchildren become thwarted when the child’s deafness is diagnosed. On the other hand, grandparents can be the source of additional support in helping to care for and raise the deaf child. Wall (2003: 33) concurs with this view, adding that some grandparents today play a greater role in their grandchildren’s upbringing, “spending the most time with them and supporting them through various key changes and stages” while parents go to work.
2.8 THE CHILD’S DEAFNESS AND THE EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING OF
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• personal growth – the realisation of personal talents and potential overtime
• positive relations with others – having close valued relationships with significant others
• environmental mastery – being able to cope with every day life demands
• autonomy – having the courage to follow personal convictions.
These six dimensions of emotional well-being have relevance for hearing parents raising deaf children, and mastery in this regard could lead to better management of their parental role.
Emotional well-being is closely related to emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998:
317-318) and emotional-social intelligence (Bar-On, 2005a: 2-4; 2003: 4). Daniel Goleman (1998: 317) describes emotional intelligence as the “capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”.
In the 1980s Bar-On pioneered a model of emotional intelligence and in 1990, Salovey and Mayor proposed a comprehensive theory of emotional intelligence, which they defined as the ability to monitor and regulate one’s own feelings and those of others, and to use feelings as a guide to thought and actions (Goleman, 1998: 317). Their model was adapted by Goleman (1998: 317-318) to include five basic social and emotional competencies. These include:
• Self-awareness: recognising our feelings and using these to guide our decisions;
being self-confident and having a realistic evaluation of our own abilities
• Self-regulation: getting a grip on our emotions so as to facilitate our actions;
delaying gratification to achieve goals; and getting over emotional distress
• Motivation: using our deepest feelings to guide us towards achieving our goals, to persevere in the face of adversity, and to strive for improvement
• Empathy: sensing how others are feeling, seeing things from their perspective, and establishing rapport with others
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• Social skills: handling emotions in relationships effectively; gaining a good understanding of social situations and interacting with others in an efficient manner to settle disputes, negotiate, persuade and work as a team.
Within the context of this study, hearing parents raising deaf children would be in a better position to manage their parenting role if these competencies are developed. It requires an understanding of their own feelings associated with the diagnosis of deafness, e.g. shock, anger, and the ability to overcome these feelings. Amidst the trials and tribulations that confront them, they need to strive towards doing what is best for their deaf child’s progress and development, while maintaining sound interpersonal relationships with others in the family, school and community at large.
Emotional intelligence was originally viewed by theorists Salovey and Mayer (1990:
189) as an interrelated component of social intelligence. Bar-On suggested that emotional-social intelligence is a combination of several intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and competencies which determine effective human behaviour (Bar-On, 2005a: 2). According to Bar-On (2005a: 4; 2005b: 47) emotional-social intelligence involves:
a cross-section of interrelated emotional and social competencies, skills and facilitators that determine how effectively we understand and express ourselves, understand others and relate with them, and cope with daily demands.
To be emotionally and socially intelligent means to “effectively manage personal, social and environmental change by realistically and flexibly coping with the immediate situation, solving problems and making decisions” (Bar-On, 2005a: 4).
Contextualising this concept in terms of this study involves hearing parents having to manage the change in their personal and social lives as a result of having a deaf child in the family, coping with the situation in a realistic and flexible manner, solving problems and making decisions that best suit their unique family circumstances and
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social contexts, bearing in mind the goal of optimising the deaf child’s potential for progress and development.
Freedman (2003: 69-70) states that emotional intelligence grows as we study ourselves and our relationships, and puts forward the following basic assumptions of emotional intelligence: without feeling there is no thinking and without thinking there is no feeling; the potential for self-knowledge increases with greater awareness of experiences; and the greater your degree of self-knowledge, the more likelihood there is of responding positively to yourself and others and making better decisions.
In effect, what this implies for hearing parents of deaf children is that they should understand themselves, their strengths and limitations, learn through their experiences so as to enjoy better intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships and make better decisions.