just ignore your family its properly jsut been a bit of a shockl to them im sure once its sunk it they wont think anything of it and he will be just as special to them. 
I never thought about his heaing,but that could be a possibility as we often think he's like the typical man n has selective hearing.He had his hearing tested at birth first time only one ear passed but they re tested the next day and passed both and said it was probably cause he still had foof gunk in them!!
Im going to mention that to my HV and see what she says.
Don't get me wrong every day we notice something new,like today he told me when I went in to get him up he said 'up' which Ive never heard before so I repeated it and so did he and then we played an up down game with lots of praise so I hope we are heading in the right direction.
it doesn't have to be a total lack of hearing, it can be frequencies, tones or only one side etc that may be being only partially heard rather than just volume, things can sound muffled or can be completely missed if they can only hear certain tones meaning that things that they hear aren't making sense so aren't making the links needed for communication. Hearing should always be checked first as it can be something as simple as a build up of wax or needing simple grommits, im suprised it wasn't suggested first before anything else. If it is something like Autism then that is a massive spectrum and once addressed correctly then children can make massive progress. You sound like you should be congratulated on your proactive attitude towards it.
