H and I’ve always wanted to have children. We knew we will have hearing children. For several reasons, donor is hearing and I come from a hearing family. Most of my relatives are hard of hearing but that doesn’t weight much of having deaf children.
H and I knew we will face some challenging. The most challenging that we had faced were – our kids’ peers’ parents and my child’s teacher. Some of those issues had solved. (Will discuss more later on)
Raising our hearing children weren’t so difficult. We have a device that helped us a lot which is baby cry signal. When a baby cry – that device send to light flashing to let us know that baby is crying. We might be in trouble if power went off. It does happen to us several times. What we did, we took our daughter, M to sleep with us. She will move and "tap" our body to wake us up. Our son, K has been sleep with me in same bed (rarely use baby cry signal). He will hit (not hard-whew) you until you wake.
I believe that we probably raise our kids just like most of you raise your own children. I’m trying to figure out what difference between hearing families and deaf families with hearing children. Probably the communication part. We use American Sign Language (ASL).
H and I strongly believe that our children must know how to use american sign language and be able to communicate with us fluency. It’s our primary communication mode. We are glad that our children have the able to use ASL and speaking English.
Often people stopped by and asked us – Are your kids deaf? We always tell them – no, they are hearing. They were so shocked to see them signing so young. ***In my mind, Hello!!! You started speaking so young too! Ha ha… Some people are sometime – ignorant! But again, sometime they didn’t know… ***
H and I wanted our kids to grow as normal kids as other. We put them into different kind of activities with other peers (hearing peers, kodas, deaf peers). I've faced some challenging myself - for example... neighbor kids were playing outside. Their mothers were chatting. I came out and they waved. That was it! I want to be part of group and chatting with them. I often watched my kids playing or doing my yardworks. I would like to know what's going on with the community or what they are talking about. I'm not going to stop my kids from playing with their kids just because of their mothers. Next door, N was nice enough to make effort to communcate with us. Have to applause for her effort but I do wish that she could do more.
I better go back to my scrapbooking. I will come back and discuss more about some issues/stories.
7 comments:
Sometimes people dont try because they feel stupid. Or they dont want to look stupid while trying. How about composing a note to let the parents in your neighborhood know that you would like to communicate with them?? I have a question. I have family friends who's niece is deaf. She was sent to a deaf school at a very young age. I thought that this was sad. It was 3 hours away from her family and she stayed m-f and came home on the weekends. Now these friends of mine who i dont get to see very much have recently learned that their grandson is also deaf.
So my question is did you and "H" have to leave home at a young age and go to a deaf school?
I LOVE it that you are telling us about your world as deaf parents of two toddlers.
I have so many questions....does the monitor go off if they talk, or just if they cry ? I'm just wondering if during the day it's going off all day. How nice that you could turn it off during a tantrum and just ignore the whole thing. Close your eyes and the crying stops.
I'm sorry that you are having issues with the neighbors and teachers. My suggestion is to talk to them. It's probably intimidating for them to talk to you. They don't want to act as if they are talking down to you...and don't really know how the communication works.
Last question. Are you hearing at all ? Do you have an implant that allows you to catch any sound ?
Are you considered or would you consider surgery to help (if correctable) your hearing ? I've just heard that with technology today they have been able to enable certain types of deaf people with sound.
Thanks again for the insight.
Thanx so much for sharing your life with us.
nailgirl24 - Yes, I don't blame them for not trying to communicate but... maybe composing a note. I will try and see what can it leads to.
I will discuss about deaf school experience and I will try to have H to explain her experience being in mainstream school "1 deaf kid in hearing school" in later blog. Or I will ask her if its okay for me to share of some of her experiences.
KJ - Sometime the monitor go off when kids or we make noise if we are too close to the signal device. They are suppose to pick up the crying sounds.
Yes, sometime the light flashing keep flashing when kids throw tandrums. Just like you cover your ears. :o) Sometime I turn the light off.
I used to have some hearing when I was young. Not anymore.
The cochlear implant - I did gave some thought about getting one. After a long research, I realized that I might be old and require a lot of extensive training. I have two kids to take care of.
I would rather to wear hearing aids (now its broke for several years). I'm working on getting new ones. (it helps me to recognize the sound not the words).
Thanks for sharing your world with us. My grandmother was deaf and she raised 3 hearing children and 3 hearing grandchildren (7 hearing grandchildren total) as a single parent.
She lost her hearing at 12 years old. She was a lip reader...I guess ASL not widely taught in the 1930s.
thanks for sharing. always interesting to read of others' experiences.
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