Blind parents’ joy: our deaf kids can hear at last
Life’s on the up for the Venter family. Mom and dad are blind but at least now their two deaf children can hear
IT WAS a moment of sheer magic: two children who were born deaf hearing the world for the first time. Birdsong, a dog barking, a computer game, even the noise of a loo flushing – everyday sounds most of us take for granted were wonders to be marvelled at for these siblings. Cochlear implants had changed their existence from one of silence to an environment filled with noise. And the surprise on the faces of Samantha (9) and Corban (7) Venter when sound enveloped them was enough to melt the hardest heart.
Sadly, their parents weren’t able to see it. Both Tanya and Johan Venter have only 4% eyesight and until recently could communicate with their two eldest children only through laborious sign language. Even so, when their kids received their implants they could feel their children’s excitement with every fibre of their being.
This isn’t the first time YOU has featured this extraordinary family. Just more than two years ago the Venters opened their home to us and showed how life in their unusual household was normal for them: two blind parents, two deaf children and a third child, Micyla (now 2), living happily among them with no disability (YOU, 15 October 2015).
Samantha and Corban are from Tanya’s previous relationship but they consider Johan their dad. Back then cochlear implants for the siblings seemed like a far-off dream. Tanya (now 33) and Johan (31) had started saving for it but it was a daunting task – they needed to come up with R395 000 per child. But they were determined to find a way.
“Our family is a success story,” Tanya said at the time. “We can definitely realise our dreams.”
Those dreams came true on 6 March last year when, with the financial aid of the Foundation for Hearing Impaired Children in South Africa, the siblings received their implants. The hearing aids were turned on a few weeks later.
“For a long time I wondered how they’d react to hearing sounds for the first time. Samantha smiled straight away and Corban was overwhelmed with joy,” says Tanya, who works as a teacher at a school for children with special needs.
“As blind parents, to be able to call your deaf children and have them hear you is an absolute miracle to us,” she says. “The implants have enriched all of our lives.”
TODAY when we walk into the Venters’ home in Claremont in the west of Pretoria, everything is quiet. Samantha and Corban hide shyly behind their mom but after a while they relax a little and Corban comes forward to greet us. He still makes no sound though and his fingers do all the talking.
“Go and play,” Tanya instructs the pair - a straightforward command most parents take for granted. But just a few months ago Samantha and Corban wouldn’t have obeyed simply because
they wouldn’t have been able to hear her – today they happily trot outside.
The siblings are only just learning to speak, their mom tells us. Because they hadn’t been exposed to the sound of words before, they hadn’t learnt to talk properly. They’re having speech therapy once a week to catch up.
Before the operation the kids needed to be near their mom and dad in order to communicate with them, Tanya explains. The family have created their own special home language. The children allow their parents to feel the signlanguage gestures they make with their hands. Tanya and Johan then interpret the movements by touch and communicate back to them.
“Since the implants our lives have become so much easier. I can call them and they respond,” Tanya says.
But it’s been a long road and the kids started answering to their names only in July. They’re making progress though, Tanya adds.
“When we speak to them their heads turn towards us. When they hear music they dance. When they hear a strange sound they ask me, ‘What’s making that noise?’ ”
Johan becomes emotional when he thinks back to a question Samantha asked him before the operation. “When I’m an adult one day, will I be able to hear you and speak to you?” she said. “That moved me,” he says.
Although things are usually pretty quiet around the house there’s one source of constant noise: little chatterbox Micyla. Around her parents the toddler talks nonstop.
“Mom, come and play. Mom, put this hat on,” she says.
But when she’s with her brother and sister she’s silent. The three children still communicate using sign language and Samantha and Corban still attend a school for the deaf – it will be a while before they’re ready to be integrated into a mainstream school.
Samantha and Corban are starting to say more words and Corban can say both his sisters’ names.
“He’s very good at lip-reading and tries to say a lot of words. He can currently only say two-syllable words like ‘mamma’, ‘pappa’ and ‘baba’. He can also say ‘thank you’ and ‘come’,” Tanya says.
Samantha still struggles with her speech and battles to say her own name.
“The doctors warned us from the start to have realistic expectations about the implants,” Tanya says.
LIFE in the Venter household has always been challenging but it’s also clearly a happy place.
When we arrived at their home Johan, a project manager in marketing, walked out to the gate and opened up for us with ease. But he says that’s only because it’s such familiar territory.
Tanya went blind at the age of nine due to a devastating degenerative condition that gradually robbed her of her sight, while Johan has been blind since birth.
“It’s hard to explain,” he says. “I can’t make out faces or details. It’s as if I’m permanently wearing dark shades with Vaseline smeared on the lenses.”
He then excuses himself to stir the rice cooking on the stove and the aroma of curry wafts out of the kitchen.
Outside the children play quietly on a climbing frame. “There are disadvantages to our situation, like when the children hysterically scream that there’s a bug and we can’t help them simply because we can’t see it,” Tanya says, laughing.
She and Johan do their own grocery shopping and often use taxi service Uber to get around.
At weekends they set up a gazebo and an inflatable swimming pool under the giant stinkwood tree in the garden and enjoy a braai together. At night Johan cooks for them while Tanya loves baking cakes.
Like most people, the couple use social media such as Facebook – but they use voice-activated smartphone apps.
“My phone can read people’s Facebook statuses to me and describe the photos they share,” Tanya explains.
The word “normal” is used very sensitively in the Venter household.
“People need to use it in context,” Johan says. “What’s normal for you isn’t necessarily normal for someone else.
“We don’t see ourselves as disabled. How can you long for something you’ve never had? We’re comfortable in our skins.”
‘When they hear music they dance. When they hear a strange sound they ask, “What’s making that noise?” ’