It is difficult for clinicians to make parents aware of any disease or permanent handicap of their children.It is crucial to have vivid picture of the reactions to such crisis in order to manage severe psychological effects of the mentioned situations such as depression and unhappiness. Confronting the situation parents have diverse feelings regarding the pregnancy period, birth time and handicap diagnosis and these are the factors that shape the parent’s upcoming reactions. Common feedbacks to the crisis are refusing the problem, keeping their child away from society, the emotions that provoke disappointment, asking about the reasons for hearing loss, referring to religion, condemning the physician, feeling sin and changing doctor frequently. When parent accept the situation and that hearing could not recurrent and understanding the natural reasons back on their child’s handicap, they can manage the situation constructively.

Background and Aim: Despite the abundance of literature about deaf children, few works specifically address the concept and practice of difficulties in parenting hearing-impaired children. The first interactions of the child are with his parents, and parents have the most important role in child improvements during early intervention programs. The main purpose of this paper was to investigate different aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children.   

Methods: In this article, we reviewed all aspects of parenting hearing-impaired children in papers from 1984-2009 in Medline, Scopus and Proquest and relative textbooks. The semi-professional role of parents of hearing-impaired children make them feel under excessive stress and this usually affects their other roles as fathers and mothers. Many factors including child age, type of hearing loss and parents' individual characteristics may influence the impact of child's hearing loss on parents.

Conclusion: Parenting a hearing-impaired child is both similar and different to parenting any other child. Where there are differences, there are usually challenges too. Taking support and advice from professionals and other parents are necessary and invaluable for parents of hearing-impaired children.

Background and Aim: Developing appropriate curriculum for the education of deaf children depends on identifying the needs of this group. We aimed to examine educational rehabilitating needs of hearing-impaired children from the point of view of their parents.

Methods: In this descriptive survey study, data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire completed by 64 parents of deaf children.

Results: Parents expressed that fitness of training with the students in school, willingness to participate in the program, and the use of a uditory-verbal therapy as a good way were the main notification preferences to families of hearing-impaired children, exceptional centers, and advertisements. They emphesied that lack of appropriate facilities, children's pertinacity, and their lack of cooperation prevented the implementation of training programs and curriculum in educational centers and home. Good verbal communication and speech was as the parents' first priority expectation of their child at the end of course. There was a significant difference between parents' opinions about the educational needs and rehabilitation (p<0.05). No significant difference was seen between the parents' suggestions about educational problems of hearing-impaired children (p>0.05). Also, there was no significantly association between the gender of child or the educational level of parents with the parents' view.

Conclusion: It seems that parents should be supported by training workshops and consulting. Also, most of the children in this study were trained auditory-verbally and the results do not mean that other educational and rehabilitation methods have not the discussed characteristics.

Background and Aim: Concerning the important role of parents of hearing-impaired children in auditory-verbal therapy, this study mainly focused on preparing a Persian version of the “Parental needs questionnaire” and analyzing its validity and reliability.

Methods: First, the original English version of the questionnaire “the needs of hearing-impaired Children’s Parents in Auditory-Verbal Therapy” translated to Persian, based on the approved translation protocol of International Quality of Life Assessment by world health organization. Then, the Persian version presented to seven experts for validating the content and their feedbacks were applied into the questionnaire. Finally, the questionnaire presented to parents of 51 hearing-impaired children who attend in auditory-verbal therapy, and the collected results were analyzed statistically.

Results: The overall mean of content validity index in 32 items of the questionnaire was 0.87. The overall Cronbach’s alpha of this questionnaire was 0.86 in the test and 0.99 in the re-test phases.

Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, the Persian version of the questionnaire has a satisfactory content validity and reliability and could be used in clinics and medical centers for analysis of parental needs.