On this episode of Family Talk, delve into the inspiring story of the Anderson family, whose journey with four profoundly deaf children speaks volumes of faith and perseverance. Dr. Dobson explores how Roger and Darlene faced countless challenges with grace, never losing sight of God’s plan for their family. Through their narrative, witness how they navigated each step with courage, illustrating the transformative power of belief and community support in times of adversity.
Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh. Today, we’re revisiting a classic broadcast featuring Dr. Dobson in conversation with Roger and Darlene Anderson. This remarkable couple has weathered extraordinary challenges within their family, demonstrating incredible faith and resilience along the way. Now, the Andersons’ journey began when they discovered their third child was deaf, a diagnosis that would forever change the family’s trajectory. Rather than being defined by limitations, they chose to embrace God’s sovereignty in their circumstances instead. And as you listen to their testimony, you’ll witness how faith can sustain us through life’s most difficult trials. Their story reminds us that even when we don’t understand God’s plan, we can certainly trust His purpose. Well, now let’s join Dr. James Dobson as he introduces the Andersons and their inspiring story on today’s edition of Family Talk.
SPEAKER 03 :
Roger, you’re a businessman. You own a business. Is that right? Yeah, a small business. And Darlene, you’re a full-time mom, a former school teacher.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
How many years did you teach school?
SPEAKER 02 :
I taught seven years and then retired to raise my family.
SPEAKER 03 :
My wife, Shirley, did exactly the same thing. Seven years of teaching and then a full-time mom. Do you think you’ll ever go back?
SPEAKER 02 :
Because I homeschool my oldest two, I really am still actively teaching, so I enjoy that much more.
SPEAKER 03 :
How did you get into homeschooling? I think that— We didn’t like the alternative.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think just from the beginning when my son was just a toddler, just thinking of what we could do with him at home— And having been a teacher, I guess I just felt like I would like to share that experience with him.
SPEAKER 03 :
Has it been what you expected it to be? It’s a lot of work, isn’t it? Yes, it is. I’ll bet she’s a fantastic teacher is what I bet she is.
SPEAKER 04 :
In between other kids and problems and things like that, yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
And the last thing or the next thing that our listeners need to know about you is Darlene, is that you’re going to have baby number seven. Well, we want to walk through your personal story in this program and let people know where you’ve been. And the portion of it that we’re particularly interested in here started with the birth of your third child, Darren. Okay, pick it up there and tell us what you learned.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Darren came along seemingly fine, like our other two, normal delivery and everything. But just probably a few months after he was born, we noticed that there was something just slightly different with him. I guess an easy way to say it is he was like a rag doll, just very floppy and didn’t develop quite like the other two had developed. And He was progressing, but very slowly. And we talked about it back and forth and didn’t want to take him in right away, thinking maybe we’re being a little paranoid.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m the type of person that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. So I don’t go running to the doctor for everything. And so I just thought, well, he was just like a little loose goose. The other kids, I could sit him on my hand and carry him around just straight in front of my chest, and it wouldn’t be a problem at all. But him, he’d just go, whoop, fall right over. Like I said, I just thought it was just a difference in a child, but it turned out to be something more than that.
SPEAKER 02 :
And we know now that is a warning sign. We were starting to say things, I think, not even consciously realizing, making observations that we, you know, just kind of storing them away. Like Roger would say, he doesn’t know my voice. He doesn’t turn to me when I call him. He doesn’t listen to me. I remember telling someone, this is not an auditory learner. I think he’s visual or something. And finally, it bothered me so much that he consented, and we took him in. And they did an evaluation of him, but basically came back with, well, he’s a little on the slow side developmentally, but he’s still within range.
SPEAKER 03 :
What age was he then?
SPEAKER 02 :
He was probably just about eight months by then. But one little test they had done there bothered me. And when I went home, I decided I was going to try the same test and see if I could get any different results. And that was they had taken a little bell and tried to ring it next to his ear, and he turned. But I think he saw the bell. And so I sat him in his high chair and gave him something to occupy himself with and stood behind and rang a little bell. And when I noticed he didn’t respond, I called Roger and showed him. And he said, well, you have to have something to really get his attention. So he got out a couple big pan lids.
SPEAKER 04 :
Husbands do things in a big way.
SPEAKER 02 :
And crashed them together right behind him. And when we saw that he was still playing with what we gave him, it was like we knew right then. This answered all the questions. Everything that we had thought and said came together right then. We didn’t even have to really discuss it. In fact, right away, I got out the phone book. I looked up an audiologist and called and made an appointment to have him seen. Well, of course, this was… near the end of the week and I couldn’t take them in until the first of the next week. And so that was probably one of those long weekends of my life.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ve all been there over one thing or another.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I think, you know, I questioned and answered all my questions.
SPEAKER 03 :
Your own questions.
SPEAKER 02 :
Cheers and everything that weekend. And I don’t think we ever said, God, why? We always felt like this is the way God has made him. But at the same time, I still grieved because I started thinking he’ll never hear music or the birds. Or your voice. Or my voice say, I love you. And I went to church that Sunday and took him and I didn’t want to tell anyone because I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just some silly idea we had. And so I went through the motions and everyone put them in the nursery with all the other children who were playing. And it was a very difficult time for me then to realize I know there’s something wrong and I can’t really share with anyone.
SPEAKER 03 :
And the next week you had it confirmed medically.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. The audiologist put them in a booth and said, did all kinds of sounds, of course. And we have no family history of deafness, so this was something totally new to us. And we really knew nothing about it. And the audiologist was now, we believe, a poor choice, but we had no knowledge of audiologists either. He was scribbling on paper, and basically, when he got finished, he said, I’ve confirmed, this is right, your son is deaf. You’ll probably want to do some more tests later on. That was basically all he told me. And I noticed he had been writing on a paper, and I said, well, can I at least have a copy of what you’re working on? And what it was was an audiogram, which is a paper, it’s like a graph. You have decibels, which are loudness on going vertically, and frequencies going across. And I took that home and tried to figure out what this paper said, and at the bottom he wrote no response at 90 decibels, which is fairly loud and loud.
SPEAKER 03 :
Did he write the word profoundly?
SPEAKER 02 :
No. There was a key on it. What I did was I went home and called the library, and I said, can you look up decibels and tell me what different sounds make how many decibels? And, of course, we learned. We’ve learned a lot since then, but maybe 10 decibels, that’s like leaves rustling. Then you get down to 120 decibels, which is a jet airplane taking off. So you have everything in between. So 90 is pretty bad, you know, when there’s no response at all.
SPEAKER 03 :
If he didn’t hear that, then he’s not hearing.
SPEAKER 02 :
So we contacted him again. He said, your son is so deaf, he’ll never learn to talk. Hearing aids will never help him. So I suggest you decide to start communicating with him through sign language.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we were fortunate. God worked in that he brought other people in, and she’s going to get to that. But whenever something like this happens, just don’t take the first opinion that you get. You have to be an advocate for your kid. You have to go out there and do the research yourself. Because on this, we thought our only recourse was to go with doing sign language. And I thought, man, I’m never going to learn sign language. When it comes to that sort of thing, I’m pretty slow.
SPEAKER 03 :
First, Roger, tell me how this diagnosis hit you.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’ve been a Christian ever since I was four years old. And in the back of my mind, I’ve always tried to reference things in a Christian perspective. At the time… It all comes down to your frame of reference. What are the principles? What are the things that determine how you handle things? And it really came down to the fact that God is sovereign. And whatever is his plan, I have to go with that.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a theological position and an understanding, but pain was still there, and it’s in your eyes and your voice right now.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, it is. It’s not nearly so much with me as it is my wife. She responds to that so much more than I do. I guess it’s because of the way I’m sewn together inside. But— I remember when we first realized that it happened and we were at church on a Sunday morning and we sort of waited around for the pastor to kind of get done with the bulk of the people and everything so we could… kind of let them know what had happened. And Darlene was there, and, of course, you know, she wasn’t doing well emotionally. But I just felt a lump in my throat about the thing, and we told him that he was deaf. And in some ways there’s so little deafness out there, a lot of people don’t even comprehend. No understanding. They have zero understanding about it. And they know it’s a serious thing, but they don’t really understand all the ramifications of it. it’s like right now, it’s very difficult to tell our son about how to be saved because there’s so many concepts of, you know, heaven, of eternal life, of sin. You’re talking to a seven-year-old, but you got almost like you’re communicating to a baby. In order to explain sin, we have to call it bad things. Where with my other son that was four years old or almost five when he was saved, it was very understandable, but we have to twist everything and frame it
SPEAKER 03 :
You really had to learn to be the parents of a deaf child, didn’t you? You don’t automatically know how to do that.
SPEAKER 02 :
You have to learn to think for them sometimes.
SPEAKER 04 :
You have to think in a way that they can understand that you don’t communicate with other people that way because their frame of language is so limited. It’s just very narrow. So you have to focus everything down into a real tight channel.
SPEAKER 03 :
You obviously then began exploring this problem medically, and you found that the cause of the deafness was what?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it was determined that he has a form of what’s called Mondini dysplasia. And just to simplify it, it’s where the cochlea, the little snail-shaped part of the ear that has all the little hair fibers in it, stops growing at a certain point. And the normal cochlea has two and a half turns, and his only had one and a half turns.
SPEAKER 03 :
And this is a genetic.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s a genetic. And at the time, in fact, we were told it was viral, that I probably had contracted something during my pregnancy and caused it. So even that, we had so much misinformation and things at first. But I had started very aggressively learning sign language. In fact, I had it arranged that we would have a and teach us. And I was getting this all set up, and Roger said, I know this may be the way we have to go, but I just don’t feel this is right. He has to grow up in a speaking world, a hearing world, and we want him to be able to be independent.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you can go to McDonald’s and order a hamburger and not try and make gestures to somebody who can’t communicate.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, that’s a very controversial point of view, isn’t it? People have very strong feelings about whether you teach sign language or English or some other language. Well, that’s the program we call it.
SPEAKER 02 :
So anyway, I decided maybe I needed to do some more research. So I started writing and contacting people. Well, actually, someone suggested I get a second opinion. We had them taken in, and this audiologist did work more with an oral program. And when she got done and showed me… the audiogram which by then i had learned a lot more about audiograms it was totally different from the first one she had him charted that he had some low frequency hearing and i said now how do i know yours is right and this other one was wrong and she said i believe this is accurate i really have faith that he tested well today and that this is where he is And she suggested we get him into hearing aids right away, which we did. And by 15 months old, he was able to say moo and bow wow. And we became very aggressive. And I educated myself as much as I can. I read and worked extensively with him. And he made very rapid progress then.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, what’s really tough is how do you test an eight-month-old? I mean, they can’t respond. Oh, I heard that. They can’t do that. And so all the audiologists can do is look for eye movements when they hear a sound on their right or their left. And so it’s extremely difficult because they can really give you nothing other than a response and maybe a facial gesture, a turn of the head, or a glint in the eye. And that’s all they can really use to test where they’re at.
SPEAKER 03 :
So you can’t do it with precision, but you do get—
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, it takes a very trained person.
SPEAKER 03 :
You do know there’s a hearing problem in most cases, don’t you?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, you all then were faced with a very important question about additional children.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, not at that point, because we still had gone on the premise that it was viral. And plus, you know, this had just happened. No family history. No family history. And in fact, when I was expecting my fourth child, late in the pregnancy, Roger was outside and he wanted to scare me. He lit off a firecracker. And he didn’t realize that at that very moment, the baby had been stirring. And so I was kind of patting my tummy and talking to the baby. And then when he made this loud noise, I realized the baby didn’t startle, which I had remembered my older two startling in the womb later in the pregnancy. And I became concerned about that. So when I went to see my doctor a couple days later, I told him about that. And he said, what a silly thing for you to think about. He said, don’t you realize that was some crazy fluke with that pregnancy? And he said, I want you to get that out of your mind and don’t even think about that again.
SPEAKER 04 :
He was trying to be kind to me.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think so.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, there’s an attitude out there. I don’t want to say necessarily an attitude, but deafness is so rare. Pediatricians almost, they don’t test for it. There’s nothing that they do that way, and it’s just so uncommon that they write it off.
SPEAKER 02 :
Anyway, that’s when I began to do more research on genetics. And I began learning some of the things that we know now, that everyone carries six to ten bad genes. And if you happen to mate with someone who is also carrying one of those bad genes, that the chances of the right combination is one in four. So basically we would have a 25 percent, every child we’d have would have a 25 percent chance of having that happen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Mendelian recessive, which means that you both carry the gene for this deafness.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. And so when our little girl was born and we were at the hospital, I begged and pleaded for the doctors to test her. I just still had that uneasiness. And they wouldn’t do it. They said, well, you have to be scheduled ahead of time and it’s too loud in the nursery and this and that. And I was quite frustrated, but maybe I wasn’t as much of an advocate and as bold as I am now. And so I let it go. And when we got home, I told him to get out the pots and pans again. And as she was going to sleep just that first night, she was only two days old, he banged the pots and pans and she didn’t respond. Didn’t respond.
SPEAKER 03 :
And this is your daughter named?
SPEAKER 02 :
Brittany.
SPEAKER 03 :
Brittany.
SPEAKER 02 :
Once you leave the hospital, then you have to go through all kinds of things to have tests done and things like that. So she was actually six weeks old before we were able to get an auditory brainstem response test done, which is pretty objective to let them know if there’s hearing or not.
SPEAKER 04 :
Bear test, they call it.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then when we went to the audiologist, she had tested Brittany at three weeks because I asked her and she wasn’t really sure. But then she realized that Brittany was far worse than Darren. And also at the same time, Darren had stopped doing well. He had like plateaued and he wouldn’t learn anymore and we couldn’t understand. Brittany got her hearing aids at nine weeks later. My audiologist tested Darren again then and found he had lost all of that low-frequency hearing he had. So now we had two children in a very profound state of hearing. And so then progress went much slower then.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Now we come to that question of additional children.
SPEAKER 02 :
We knew at that point that, you know, if we had any more children, that this definitely could happen again. We only had two and two. And I think we were really very optimistic during our fifth pregnancy because we felt.
SPEAKER 03 :
Chances were 75%. Yeah, that’s what I said.
SPEAKER 02 :
We have 75% chance of, you know, this child hearing again.
SPEAKER 03 :
Roger, did your friends support the idea of additional children?
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ve had very few friends support the idea of additional children. God has for you, I think, a core of people, not the bulk of Christians in your church, but there’s a few core people that God brings you to help you through these things. I wish it was better. I wish the whole church rallied around you. But there are a few people that God brings in to help you through this. And there were a few that got you through it. There was a few. And they would come at Darlene with, you know, why doesn’t Roger have an operation? Or, you know, how come you’re having more kids when they could be handicapped? You know, things like this that really, you know, you’re struggling enough as it is. You don’t really need that. You need encouragement.
SPEAKER 03 :
You need to be exhorted. What is particularly painful about that is that there’s an implication behind a statement like that. That a child with a disability should not be born. That he or she is less of a human being. And that comes through in a moment like that.
SPEAKER 04 :
is that they’ve lost the idea that there is something bigger than ourselves out there, that God has things in mind that he really would like us to keep our hands off of. And it’s a terrible thing to hear about babies being aborted when they’re most of the way out of the womb and everything like this. It stabs in your heart when you know that Darren with his defect and Brittany with hers, they’re just as valuable as any normal kid out there. You know, God says in Genesis, I forget who he was talking to, he says, who has made man’s ear? God takes full credit for my child’s defect. He doesn’t apologize for it one bit. And he can use it for good.
SPEAKER 03 :
He certainly has. So you decided to go ahead and have another child.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. It was, I think, a little more difficult for me because I knew that if it happened again, how much work it is is a lot of work raising them and working with them and so I probably struggled with that you know just making the decision to go ahead but as when I look back now and I guess I would say that had we made this decision to stop because of what might happen we would have robbed ourselves so many joys you would know those other kids And they’re a lot of work, but they’re precious children.
SPEAKER 03 :
The third child was also born deaf.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, actually, the fifth child.
SPEAKER 02 :
The third deaf child, our fifth child.
SPEAKER 03 :
And a fourth one. And a sixth, yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Our sixth child.
SPEAKER 03 :
So you have four hard-of-hearing children, are all of them profoundly deaf?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Before we go any further, talk about where God is in this for you. Obviously, you prayed about those other three children after the first child was born deaf. What did He say to you? And what are your conclusions about where He is?
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t think God doesn’t make sense. I think God makes perfect sense. But this world is so distorted by sin, and it’s under a curse. The ground is cursed that we get our food from. And it really appears… that God doesn’t because we look at it and I think we want to say, what did I do to deserve this? I think we look at it from that perspective.
SPEAKER 03 :
You understand that is the implication of the title, when God doesn’t make sense to us. Sure. He makes perfect sense. Absolutely. He always makes perfect sense. It just doesn’t make sense to us.
SPEAKER 04 :
This world is not what it’s supposed to be. This world was created to be something far different than what it is today. And we suffer in the light of that. We have defects. We have imperfections. We die. It’s something that isn’t supposed to be this way. But because we’re in this world, we have to deal with it. And I think emotionally, we come up with those feelings about why doesn’t God make sense.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, we’ve barely scratched the surface on the Anderson’s remarkable journey. So I hope you’ll make plans to join us again next time when we continue this conversation here on Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh, and we’ve just heard part one of Dr. Dobson’s conversation with Roger and Darlene Anderson. Now, if today’s broadcast resonated with you, Why not share it with someone who might also need this message of hope as well? You can easily access today’s program and share it with others by visiting drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. And you know, this year marks a special milestone here at the James Dobson Family Institute. It’s the 15th anniversary of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. And we would love to hear how Dr. Dobson has impacted your life and family. Your meaningful memory will be a gift as we celebrate God’s faithfulness through this ministry. Now, you can go online to drjamesdobson.org and follow the prompts to leave a message. You can either write your message out on the website there, or you can record an audio or video greeting as well for Dr. Dobson and the team here at the JDFI. You can do all of that to celebrate our 15th anniversary when you go to drjamesdobson.org. Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we’re committed to preserving and promoting the institution of the family and the biblical principles upon which it’s built. Every day, families face unprecedented challenges to their values and well-being. And through broadcasts like the one you heard today, we provide biblical guidance and practical wisdom to help families navigate the culture with confidence and faith. Your support makes it possible for stories like the Andersons to reach millions of listeners searching for hope and direction. You can make a secure donation online at drjamesdobson.org. You can also make a secure donation over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Or if you prefer, you can write to us. Our ministry mailing address is Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, p.o.box.org. 39,000 Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Again, that’s P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80949. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. James Dobson and all of us here at Family Talk, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for the conclusion of Dr. Dobson’s fascinating conversation with Roger and Darlene Anderson. That’s coming up on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
