Oh, I just had to add my comments haha! Ok , here goes if I have not already
forgotten what you have said Stephan, it was a mouthful!!! I can understand
Parent's viewpoint of wanting their children to learn to speak. I myself am
a parent and I want my kids to learn to sign. It makes my husband and I
crazy that my son who is 4 years old goes to a hearing preschool and comes
home and can't sign. It is taking us a whole summer to teach him again. On
the otherhand, I have seen very few parents willing to accept their child's
language and those parents learn sign well enough to communicate on a
everyday basis, almost fluently. One mother I have here in Las Cruces, when
she discovered Hannah was deaf at 15 months old, she went to researching
about sign language, now Hannah is at kindergarten age and her language is
that of her hearing peers. It's amazing to see this. Hannah's mom really
wants a bilingual education, but I know she isn't going to. I have two
teachers in the Deaf/HH classroom (they still call it "hearing impaired") and
the teacher of Hannah (soon to be) says she uses ASL, but in my observations
she uses SEE when the kids are reading then closes the book and asks for the
child to repeat in ASL...ummm my question is always, the child doesn't really
know the difference between English and Asl, so how can the child repeat in
ASL. With my students I tried to teach them to first read and then pick out
key words and the point of the sentence. But now I have SW so it helps me
very much. However, I'm sadden that these teachers do not attempt to try.
They become thrilled when a student can say the word "baby." It's hard to
share their enthusiasium.
I think for the most part is that hearing parents are somewhat blind. It has
taken me a long time to realize that there are many people that still do not
know what Deaf Culture is, and if there is such a thing. It takes every
ounce of my strengeth not to scream out "there is nothing wrong with being
Deaf!" But I think the Deaf Community has great patience with the hearing
world, and we accept many things, especially since we are parents ourselves.
You know my husband approved of having our son go to speech therapy ( he did
this when I had to go to Colorado), and well, now he has "reformed" so to
speak haha he regrets he made that choice. I think hearing people are worse
with hearing children of Deaf adults. Even though their first language is
ASL or equivalant to ASL (they usually learn ASL from the Deaf Community not
from the parents), hearing people think that they need speech therapy.
Lipreading or in our terms "flapping lips," in indeed very difficult. I
can't even understand my own mother and father. They have resorted to using
the tty as our communication mode. Sometimes, I can do very well, like what
Stephan said when you know the topic of the conversation, and so forth. I
applaud Deaf who say they go to an oral school and lipread well, but can they
hear any better? They still miss out on the world around them, and viewed by
many as handicapped, while the Deaf Community views it's language and it's
beliefs as a culture. We are not thought of as handicapped at least not
amongst ourselves. I think the best fitting word might be..foreignors.
Well, that... again is my 2 bits for today:)
Smile
nancy
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