A Little Bit Hard of Not Hearing Loss
By Traci Penland, Georgia H&V
H&V Communicator – Fall 2018
In November of 2012, my husband and I boarded a plane bound for Beijing, China. It was the first leg of our journey to adopt two deaf toddlers, and we couldn’t have been more excited. Our friends and family, including our four-year-old son Eli, cheered us on from Atlanta, everyone anxious for us to “bring the babies home!”

Born to deaf parents, my husband’s first language was American Sign Language, and during our twenty years together I had learned to love the beauty and mystery of visual language as much as him. Our daughter, Rosalee, had turned four in China a few days earlier and would be named after her deaf grandmother. Our son, Charles III (Trey), had already turned two, and would be named after his deaf grandfather. Sitting on the runway we talked and dreamed together, as visions of our kids someday storming the gates of Gallaudet filled our minds.
A few days later, we met Trey. We left our hotel before sunrise that morning, eating our breakfast in the cab, though I was too nervous to eat much of anything. Once we arrived at his orphanage, we signed papers and sat in the waiting room with our interpreter and orphanage workers for what felt like years, until finally someone motioned for us to look down the hall. I turned and saw a bundle of clothes and squeaky shoes toddling towards me, and my heart melted. “He is soo beautiful!” one of the interpreters said. I couldn’t have agreed more.
Those first few days with Trey were filled with matchbox cars and cheerios and elevator rides down and up and down again, and anything else that made him smile. We learned that the new-baby glow parents feel when welcoming a child into the family transcends biology. From the very beginning, Trey was all ours, and we were all his. Every second of those early days with Trey is a treasure we will hold in our hearts forever.
One of our first outings was touring the beautiful city of Beijing. As we sat high in our tour bus, watching all the cars zoom by, Trey was making sweet little sounds we took to be babbling. We laughed at his amazement, as he would look at the cars below and then look at his matchbox car, and then at the cars below, back and forth. He was adorable! Finally, the interpreter turned to us and said “you know he just said ‘car’ in Chinese”. I blinked and then blinked again and asked her to repeat herself. She did, and my mind went blank. It felt like the whole world slowed down. My husband and I looked at each other, eyes wide, and together said the same thing – “You mean he can hear?”
What were we going to do now? Teaching a deaf child the cultural significance of Deaf President Now within the greater disability rights movement… no problem! Reading an audiogram…. problem! Diving into the world of hearing just wasn’t anything we’d ever planned on doing. Our faith is the essence of who we are, and we both felt strongly that we were supposed to adopt deaf children. Had we heard wrong?
I’m a former financial analyst and current information junkie so I’d spent the previous year researching everything I could find about deaf education and literacy and Bilingual-bicultural (BiBi) deaf programs and ASL content standards. I’d spent zero time learning about audio-anything. But because he expressed an interest in wanting to hear, we dove in, having no idea what we were doing.
Trey now wears a bone conduction hearing aid and has speech therapy a few times a week. He has bilateral microtia, and with his hearing aid on, he hears fairly typically, though unilaterally. This can make hearing in noise or localizing sound tricky. He loves music and singing and will most likely (unless cooler heads prevail) get a karaoke machine for Christmas. He is also an ASL champ, and loves to sign scary stories around the campfire with his profoundly deaf sister and older brother, who can hear. Language is Trey’s friend, and watching him play with both English and ASL has been fascinating. He’s become quite a master negotiator in our house, and his most favorite phrase to sign right now– especially when getting into trouble – is “yes, BUT….”
The title of this article is confusing because we were confused. Or we were confused, for a little while. Things don’t always turn out the way we think they will. But that’s okay. Through this journey with Trey we’ve learned that God’s most audacious work doesn’t come from him swooping in and taking over. His greatest work is within us, changing the way we think and feel and move, until we finally stumble into what he had for us all along.
At Trey’s annual checkup his pediatrician and I were discussing his progress and he said, “Ya know, I think Trey’s perfect just the way God made him.” We couldn’t agree more. ~
Editor’s note: Penland is an ASTra Guide with Georgia Hands & Voices, lives in Atlanta, and is passionate about building community for all kids with hearing loss.