Dr. David Luterman began his career about 50 years ago as an audiologist. In his practice, he felt like families were not able to process information about their child’s hearing loss after he gave a diagnosis. Shock and grief was in the way. So, he made a change. This is when he decided to delve into working with families and their feelings about having a child with hearing loss. Since then, Dr. David Luterman has dedicated his life to counseling families in Boston as the director of the Thayer Lindsey Family Centered Nursery for Hearing Impaired Children. He has taught counseling courses at Emerson College, published books, and traveled around the world counseling families and training professionals.
The Hearing Impaired Continuum was lucky enough to have Dr. Luterman visit. On the evening of October 27th, Dr. Luterman ran a support group for our families of children with hearing loss. While the families and Dr. Luterman sat in the inner circle, our staff from all of the programs in the Hearing Impaired continuum sat in the outer circle and observed him at work. The families consisted of those with babies in our Early Intervention Program through junior high school. It was extremely valuable to our staff to observe specific counseling techniques in action. At the end of the evening after the families left, Dr. Luterman spent some time with the staff which provided the opportunity to discuss what was observed.
On Saturday, October 28th, Dr. Luterman provided a full-day workshop for staff for The Hearing Impaired Program (HIP), The Secondary Hearing Impaired Program (SHIP), Union Street School, and Sound Solutions. This consisted of lecture, open discussion in a support group type format, opportunities to break into groups and practice counseling techniques taught as well as videos. The day was an opportunity for personal growth as well as professional growth. It challenged the staff to come out of the “helping” role that we are in and learn to empower families to build their self-esteems and acknowledge their feelings about having a child with hearing loss. It was a weekend to remember and the program is grateful for this opportunity to sharpen our counseling skills.
