A child's perspective

I had an interesting conversation with my older (hearing) son tonight. He is almost 4 and very mature for his age both developmentally and linguistically. (I mention that because I think it adds emphasis to his comments). We were talking about something he heard that was loud and I said that he has sensitive ears. (He really does and I swear he makes up for Kevin's lack of hearing by how good his ears are.) He hears me say that he has sensitive ears often. He told me that is why he didn't need to wear implants. I told him that Kevin needed to wear them because his ears 'were born broken'. He then told me that he used to wear them and now he doesn't need to. I'm not sure if he really thought he used to wear them or was just testing or what, but I proceeded to tell him that he never wore them because his ears were born just fine. He then asked me when Kevin could take them off and his ears would be fine. I realized that by telling him his ears were broken, he thought this was like a cast and would 'fix' them. I explained to him that he would always need his implants to hear. We haven't talked at length with our son about deafness, partially because I thought it was too much of an abstract idea for a little kid to comprehend and partially because he had such a hard time dealing with everything when we were all going to the process of diagnosis, surgery, activation, etc. I think it is time to be more open with him and talk more freely about it. It was just a very interesting to me that he thought these were temporary. Wouldn't that be wonderful!?!?!??!

On another note, Kevin is really comprehending well these days. We took our son up skiing last weekend and Kevin hates the snow, so he stayed behind. When I got back, I asked him about the snow and where we find it and he told me 'at Lake Tahoe' in a very clear response. He stunned all of us!