I’m still thinking about whether I want to run with an acronym like DOH 
I’m afraid I’m a product of my times since I keep seeing that as “D’oh” a la Homer Simpson.
But - Deaf of Hearing — there are many of us and we’re quite a varied lot. There’s many of us, because something like 90% of deaf people are born to hearing parents. Ninety percent. And yet, I think because of that same diversity in combination with the hearing world’s tendency to go for assimilation, we feel like the smallest group sometimes, with very little cohesion. And given that the majority of deaf people have this background, I am simply agog that there isn’t more of a national outreach and network to these parents. I suppose it’s a large and diverse country, too.
Given how little hearing people know about deaf people, DOH face an uphill battle in terms of early exposure to ASL and its culture. It’s perfectly natural for hearing parents to want their child to communicate with them, which generally means English. The lack of coherency among deaf educators generally means that ASL gets short shrift, especially in this country where so many people seem to view learning a second language with a fair amount of horror at the difficulty (and indeed with no little suspicion as unAmerican — among one of the original impetus for oralists at the end of the 19th century I kid you not).
So those of us DOH who are at all capable of learning oral often grow up this way. If we can’t, then thanks to the ignorance of most hearing people, educators as well as parents, we are often taught some type of manual coding: SEE, Cued English, etc. We almost always got hearing aids back in my day (I’m a rubella baby); today it’s cochlear implants which generally come with a toxic combination of audio-verbal therapy which actually prohibits the use of signing. This means many of us come late to ASL — when we are old enough to seek it out for ourselves.
This all also means we are quite frequently isolated from other deaf people, so we build no networks or friendships with authentic peers as we’re growing up. No matter how skilled we are within the framework that is “working” for us, we’re always on the outside.
Some few of us have parents who will do the research themselves and grasp the underlying issues and do their best to give their child early exposure to ASL, even if on a social basis. Many school districts across the country enforce the mainstream philosophy as a misguided outgrowth of ADA. I have often seen such parents searching for ways to put together play groups, or other means of getting together. Some will move to more congenial areas of the country.
OK, so much for the overview which is necessarily replete with generalities. As a DOH, I was blessed with very supportive parents who did everything they felt was best for me. And because I am one of those deaf who did very well with oral methods, through whatever quirk of nature allowed hearing aids to work very well with me, it turned out that as far as school and academics and spoken English went, it was all a no brainer. Worked very well with me. My family has always been supportive of whatever I want to do, have never given me any sort of trouble over “deaf” issues. They repeat anything I need repeated. I’m sure they would have learned some type of manual coding or ASL had that come up necessary for me. But because I did so well, I literally grew up not knowing a single other deaf person. In retrospect if there was one thing I’d change, it would be the addition of some form of socializing with other deaf children (and ASL) in conjunction with my schooling.
I had a few sticky wickets in school regarding speech therapy, which I regarded in third and fourth grades as a convenient way to get out of classes and kick my heels for a while, tolerated in fifth grade, but in sixth grade (not coincidentally, I’m sure, when school actually became serious work and not just in the same classroom all day) declared it a waste of time. The school was all set to come down on me but my parents backed me up 100%. Fortunately California is a bit more sane than other states. This was before the whole IEP stuff was put in place, but even here, if you check California law, it has been amended in several places to give explicit recognition to the fact that “least restrictive environment” has to be considered differently for deaf children.
And yet, even with all that, no matter what hearing (and not a few deaf) people will assume, I will never, ever, be a 100% part of the hearing world. I am deaf and I miss all the little things I can never access in the hearing world, quick conversations, whispers, tone of voice, all kinds of subtleties. It is not a matter of “working harder” or “getting better hearing aids” or any further effort on my part. I have always put my full effort into anything I do, far more than many hearing people have had. I have finally come to this realization at a ridiculously late age, I think, and am now learning ASL. C’est la vie — in some ways I think the solid support system my parents gave me at the same time delayed my investigation into deaf culture. Ironic, isn’t it?
For any hearing parent of a deaf child reading this, I would make these observations: There really isn’t any one correct way to educate or raise a deaf child. We are all individuals just like anyone else. But, here are some points I’d raise:
- Don’t blame yourself or consider your child in any way shape or form deficient. Just let that go. The sooner you do that the better.
- Make sure your child has other deaf peers as she is growing up…don’t have her be “one of a kind”. She will notice and internalize the difference from very early on and it is demoralizing.
- If she is learning sign language (or any form of manual coding), LEARN IT TOO. No, you will not be a good or fluent signer for a long time and she will quickly outstrip you. But when she is a teen and an adult and the two of you can reasonably talk, she will absolutely appreciate the work you put into it
- Always always be patient with communication. Just let go of frustration and anger and guilt and whatever else, and just calmly figure out what he is saying. Knowing that you consider it important to know what he is saying in of itself will be very helpful
*mull mull* I’m still in shock over people accusing you of milking deafness for pity over here when you talk honestly about the effort invlved in having to chase down every word. I can’t imagine you milking pity out of a double amputation for chrissakes.
But the idea of having to put forth the effort and being as a result isolated from hearing society is also something I recall hitting when you told me about it once — when we went up to SF for that big get-together, I remember you remarking that you found those sorts of things less enjoyable than I because those sorts of “fifteen people all talking at once” conversations were hard to follow for you.
And god damn it, I remember thinking about this for about three or four days afterwards, trying to come up with ways to make it workable, and I kept coming up against a wall. The only conclusion I kept reaching was that it just couldn’t work. There simply wasn’t a way for a conversation like that to work for you analogous to how it would work for me. The mapping couldn’t be accomplished. That pissed me off a bit because I wanted to find a way to map one model for conversation onto another one — “How can a fifteen-person simultaneous conversation be mapped onto a deaf person’s interaction model with the world?” — and I kept coming up with, “It can’t.”
ASL’s just the only non-limited thing like that. It’s not precisely the same as a hearing model, because I don’t think fifteen signing talkers can fit into a person’s field of view easily, but it’s a shedload better than using sound. The only thing you can do really is to use the unlimited sense — the eyes.
you know what it also makes me think of — those Pollyannas who try to come up with ways for me to participate in sports. I’d love to do aikido, and I can’t. “I bet you could if you really tried!” No, I can’t. Seriously. “But you see, yuor own poor self-image is limiting you! If you really believed in yourself, I bet you could!” No, I couldn’t. “See? You’re your own problem!” *punches interlocutor* No, I can’t not be disabled if I just try harder.
Try to talk them into learning another language or getting better a math by just trying harder and how their poor self-esteem and self-pity interferes, and see how fast they lose their tempers, though. O:-)
“*punches interlocutor*”
*giggles*
See, you *don’t* need Aikido
But more seriously, yep, I know what you mean. It’s a good parallel example too, I’ll have to remember that one.
Good advice that you gave out to hearing parents! Also many deaf kids who are usually isolated from their peers would always think that something is amiss. I personally believe that all deaf kids know that they are deaf from the minute that they were born and hearing parents must make the time to sit down and explain that they cannot hear and that they will always remain deaf for the rest of their lives.
Michele
Yes, indeed. I remember thinking that I’d “grow out” of being deaf when I was very young, since no one else was deaf. I figured it was like orthodontics or something.
“(Speaking/Learning other languages is) un-American — among one of the original impetus for oralists at the end of the 19th century I kid you not.”
I believe you 100%!!!
Just compare what went on in the Native American schools around the turn of the last century to what went on in the Deaf schools. The stories are hauntingly familiar.
They isolated Native American students from their families. They mixed tribes so that the only communication they could use was English. They used physical punishment on students who tried to communicate in their native languages.
Why? Because they saw native languages as inherently inferior. It was “what’s best” for students to learn a “true” language, English, so as to not stunt their intellectual development. Speaking their native languages would inhibit them learning English and marginalize them in society.
Sound familiar???
In the 1920s, the linguist Edward Sapir started studying Native American languages, discovering not only that they were full, true languages, but had unique structures. This triggered a Gold Rush of linguists trying to document not only Native American languages, but all spoken minority languages worldwide.
Fast-Forward to 1960. William Stokoe. You know the rest.
It wasn’t only in America. The wave of Nationalism in the late Nineteenth Century lead to the elimination of many minority languages and dialects. Who speaks Wendish, Cornish or Vallon today? The coercive assimilation of these speakers defy any rationalization other than conformity to the new Nationalistic norm.
Quick point: Cornwall is currently doing a lot to try to recover Cornish … but there are only 100 fluent speakers in the world, and NO native speakers. ALL fluent speakers are autodidacts who learned it as adults because they wanted to keep the language from being forgotten entirely. They have their work cut out for them; I wish them all the luck in the world.
The willful destruction of minority languages is one of the greatest evils that can be perpetrated. It’s like historical genocide. It doesn’t kill a people in the present — it excises them from history, erases them as if they never were. It’s revolting. Retroactive genocide.
Aw, forget the labels. DOH, DOD, they are only meaningful when discussing the parameters of education. Nobody in the Deaf community uses these terms except maybe for Gallaudet people. We’re all Deaf.
I loved your points of advice to parents. These should be cross-stitched into plaques and presented to every new parent of deaf babies as a gift along with their layettes.