Are deaf kids bullied/harrassed more frequently than hearing kids in mainstream?

Cheetah said:
You obviously do not live the same life that I live. I suspect a number of other people here would agree with me.

Laws may have changed. But the ingrained attitudes persist. You can choose to ignore the audist around you. I cannot.
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Exactly. Ditto that in the bold.
 
posts from hell said:
there are some home owners association that bar blacks from living in certain neighborhoods... right here in the USA!
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Hmm, yeah it sounds like two of my friends...one of them told me that if new black tenants move in the apt that my friend owns, he would increase a cost of the rent. =X
 
howag said:
Yes, but is it not also the stereotype that Asians can't drive and have small penises? Kind of balances it out really.
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HAhahah...oops, i mean no offense. Asian penises does not bother me...because I had been there and done that. Oh, my TMI. Anyway, I've seen a porn of 3-foot schlong Japanese guy. Yes, TMI again.
 
sallylou said:
There was a horrendous dragging death in a rural town in Texas a few years back. You're deluding yourself if you think racism is dead.

I don't know where you got the idea that critical thinking and being able to write well aren't important. You sound very spoiled.
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Yes, that was in Jasper, Texas. Another one somewhere in Louisiana a several years back that involved 5 or 6 blacks beating a sole white boy at a school.
 
Latascha said:
Wow, it just took me two days to work my way through all 13 pages. I started reading and noticed after a while that one unpleasant memory after another popped up.
I was mainstreamed, I was bullied, I hated it.
I'm not sure what was worse. The teachers, not doing anything, the teachers laughing along with other students, or my so called "friends" humiliating me every single day.
It was hell...
7th to 9th grade were a really dark hour.

I can't finish this right now, my daughter is up, but I hope I can get it off my chest sometime later.
Click to expand...

It is so amazing how the "deaf experience" contains so many likenesses no matter where or how you were raised. That experience is a constant for deaf kids everywhere. And it is the most difficult thing to get hearing parents to accept. They always have, "My my child will be different!" ready to pop out of their mouths. No, your child is not different. Your child will also have the sameness of the deaf experience, no matter what device they use or don't use. And one day, we will see your child, whom you claimed was going to be oh! so different as a result of technology and your super-human powers as a parent, posting on forum just like this and saying the same things that the d/D adults are saying today.

Here's the thing...a deaf child is going to live the deaf experience, period. Assistive devices don't change that, advances in technnology don't change that, keeping them in an oral environment and a mainstreamed or oral school does not change that. They are deaf and they will have the deaf experience in their lives.

However, it doesn't have to be a horrible experience if you provide for their needs as a deaf child. Addressing a deaf child's needs from a hearing perspective is what creates all of the negative experience deaf adults describe from their childhood. It changes to a positive after they discover Deaf culture, signed language, and a community of their peeers. The whole of the Deaf experience becomes a sense of pride instead of shame, a sense of belonging instead of being excluded, a sense of being whole instead of broken,

Most of the d/Deaf adults on this forum had to wait until they became adults and no longer had to abbide by the decisions their hearing parents made for them to find this positive deaf experience. But it doesn't have to be that way.That is something we can change at any time in any generation. All it takes is to provide for the deaf child's needs as a deaf child. Empower them NOW, not later.
 
katz4life said:
HAhahah...oops, i mean no offense. Asian penises does not bother me...because I had been there and done that. Oh, my TMI. Anyway, I've seen a porn of 3-foot schlong Japanese guy. Yes, TMI again.
Click to expand...

Lol are you sure you weren't watching anime?
 
jillio said:
It is so amazing how the "deaf experience" contains so many likenesses no matter where or how you were raised. That experience is a constant for deaf kids everywhere. And it is the most difficult thing to get hearing parents to accept. They always have, "My my child will be different!" ready to pop out of their mouths. No, your child is not different. Your child will also have the sameness of the deaf experience, no matter what device they use or don't use. And one day, we will see your child, whom you claimed was going to be oh! so different as a result of technology and your super-human powers as a parent, posting on forum just like this and saying the same things that the d/D adults are saying today.

Here's the thing...a deaf child is going to live the deaf experience, period. Assistive devices don't change that, advances in technnology don't change that, keeping them in an oral environment and a mainstreamed or oral school does not change that. They are deaf and they will have the deaf experience in their lives.

However, it doesn't have to be a horrible experience if you provide for their needs as a deaf child. Addressing a deaf child's needs from a hearing perspective is what creates all of the negative experience deaf adults describe from their childhood. It changes to a positive after they discover Deaf culture, signed language, and a community of their peeers. The whole of the Deaf experience becomes a sense of pride instead of shame, a sense of belonging instead of being excluded, a sense of being whole instead of broken,

Most of the d/Deaf adults on this forum had to wait until they became adults and no longer had to abbide by the decisions their hearing parents made for them to find this positive deaf experience. But it doesn't have to be that way.That is something we can change at any time in any generation. All it takes is to provide for the deaf child's needs as a deaf child. Empower them NOW, not later.
Click to expand...
Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
The first four years it is the same for every child. After that, there are three different type of schools. The "Hauptschule" with another five years of education. After that you can look for a job. Then there is the "Realschule" with six more years of education, with slightly different subjects and a little higher standard. If you go that way you can either get a job afterwards, or transfer to another schoolprogram where you graduate from after another three years. With that you can at least go to a few collages, but your choice is very limited. Then you have the "Gymnasium". You attend from grade five to grade thirteen (for a few years now only until grade twelve). After that you can go to any college, university and study whatever you like. So it always was clear that I would go to such a school, where I'd have as many options as possible for later. Well, for deaf kids there is only ONE school in the whole country which offers this education and that was really far away, plus the reputation of that school is really bad. A no go for my parents, and I agree on that point. (Many people who went there didn't go to collage or just didn't make it, because the teachers were very easy on them, so they graduated without the required knowledge..) In Munich there is another school for deaf kids, but that is one with a two year system after which I could only choose from a very short list to study. Those are the only two schools existing in Germany for deaf kids with the option to go to university afterwards. Oh that one in Munich is not really for deaf kids. They have mixed classes and if you are lucky you are not the only deaf student out of 15. Actually there is a one pure deaf class each year with only a few students, but they have to attend school for one more year, learn everything only a lot slower and it really is stupid, because the teachers don't know any sign language. Maybe they know how to spell their own name, but even that is rare.
With all that in mind, I was mainstreamed and I really am grateful for it, besides the fact that it was hell, but not being allowed to attend college would've been worse. So after four really good years at school where I had a few friends, got along with my teacher I was enrolled in a "Gymnasium" with a good reputation. We were 37 children in one class, I knew no one besides a girl from my old class, who was my "friend" back then but very quickly turned her back on me.
The girls just ignored me most of the time, but the boys were really mean. I told more then one of my teachers, I told my parents, but I got all that crap many of you said already. "Boys will be boys....You have to learn to stand up for yourself...There is nothing wrong with being different. If they do treat you differently, they are not your true friends" It really didn't matter. True friends or no true friends, for a ten year old girl there are other things that matter like not having to eat lunch alone every single day. Not getting picked on everywhere, by older students, even some teachers.
I got older, my parents told me I should stand up for myself, so I did. Yeah, didn't work at all. After I stopped ignoring all those jerks it really got bad for two years. I actually was a good student, but that was over then, too. I started to ditch school which made everything worse actually. I was afraid to go home, because maybe someone had seen me or told my parents that I hadn't been in school. At the same time I got more and more scared of the idea to go back to that place and endure another single day.
I liked math, until one day my teacher laughed at me, because I pronounced something wrong. Along with her, the whole class started to giggle...Same thing happened in french a few times. Well, in french it happened to everybody, that was not that bad, at least I told myself that over and over, until I finally believed it. Geography was bad. The teacher had a full beard and was talking to the blackboard most of the time. When he asked something and I couldn't give him the right answer (he wouldn't repeat himself, I should just pay more attention) he threw pieces of chalk at me. My german teacher told me once in front of the whole class that I should try to make some friends and not shut everyone out...The more I think about it, the more memories pop up in my head. My classmates along with my "friends" loved to hide my things, throw my jacket out into the dirt (there are no lockers in german schools, you just have all your stuff with you the whole time), destroy papers I wrote,etc.
9th grade was different, finally. We were mixed and splitted into new, smaller classes and I somehow got lucky and only had to deal with a handful of jerks on a daily basis. Many of the new kids just ignored me and that was fine with me. I didn't like it, but it was way better, then the years before. Still, I didn't stop the ditching, I just hated that place and escaped as often as possible. My parents were absolutely clueless. I remember one day in 10th grade when my chemistry teacher wanted to talk to me in private. She took me to her lab and said that she was worried, because I had been sick a lot lately and that she was afraid that it would cause separation between me and the other students, that I would lose the connection to the rest of the class and that she didn't want that to happen. It sure felt like a slap in the face. That woman had never noticed anything, or remembered anything for that matter, because she was one of the teachers I had told about my random schoolday. I just smiled, told her that nothing had changed and left. The last two years were worse, again. But at that time I just focused on studying and repeated "It will be better once you get out of here" over and over and over. That's how I made it, I think. I didn't go to prom, I never set a foot into that school anymore.

Yes, I was able to turn all that into experience, it made me the person I am today, but NOBODY should have to go through something like that!
Being a teenager is hard, even as a privileged white male I'd say. To be different is not an easy thing, not when everyone around you tells you that you just have to try harder to fit in. The truth is you NEVER will! Hard thing for me to learn was that it is absolutely okay! In school I stopped wearing my HAs because I was afraid someone could notice and get another reason to make fun of me. If I wore them, I tried to hide them under my hair. Today I just sometimes choose to not wear them, but that is because I'm sick of all that noise.
Sometimes I still wonder who I can blame for all that. For all those years of torture I had to endure. Why wasn't there anybody to hear what I had to say? To believe the things I had to go through? Why didn't anyone help me?? And then I do have to stop myself from thinking: I know why, I just wasn't worth it.
At this point I get angry again. How is it possible, in a society which claims to call itself "tolerant" to have to deal with crap like that?!
Nobody should have to doubt him/herself for who he/she is. It is pretty sad actually.
Yes, all that experience is a reason for me to sometimes not like hearing people, to think all of them are ignorant! I do have to work on that, but it is really hard if I get one example after the other that my statement is totally correct.

There is not one school in Germany for deaf kids where teachers know and use german sign language. The best thing you can find around here is signed german in a few deaf schools. My husband went to a deaf school. There the deaf and HoH kids were separated, even during the break, out of fear the HoH could learn sign language and forget their speech. You know what's really bad? Most deaf kids don't know how to sign very well, but they don't know german very well either. They just don't have a language!!! That is still happening here! We are about twenty years behind the USA. (Ok, I'll stop right here, I'm getting OT)
 
jillio said:
It is so amazing how the "deaf experience" contains so many likenesses no matter where or how you were raised. That experience is a constant for deaf kids everywhere. And it is the most difficult thing to get hearing parents to accept. They always have, "My my child will be different!" ready to pop out of their mouths. No, your child is not different. Your child will also have the sameness of the deaf experience, no matter what device they use or don't use. And one day, we will see your child, whom you claimed was going to be oh! so different as a result of technology and your super-human powers as a parent, posting on forum just like this and saying the same things that the d/D adults are saying today.

Here's the thing...a deaf child is going to live the deaf experience, period. Assistive devices don't change that, advances in technnology don't change that, keeping them in an oral environment and a mainstreamed or oral school does not change that. They are deaf and they will have the deaf experience in their lives.

However, it doesn't have to be a horrible experience if you provide for their needs as a deaf child. Addressing a deaf child's needs from a hearing perspective is what creates all of the negative experience deaf adults describe from their childhood. It changes to a positive after they discover Deaf culture, signed language, and a community of their peeers. The whole of the Deaf experience becomes a sense of pride instead of shame, a sense of belonging instead of being excluded, a sense of being whole instead of broken,

Most of the d/Deaf adults on this forum had to wait until they became adults and no longer had to abbide by the decisions their hearing parents made for them to find this positive deaf experience. But it doesn't have to be that way.That is something we can change at any time in any generation. All it takes is to provide for the deaf child's needs as a deaf child. Empower them NOW, not later.
Click to expand...


:applause: (well said!)
 
howag said:
Lol are you sure you weren't watching anime?
Click to expand...

You wish. That was for real. I am not sure where my friend's gay neighbor friend got it from. It was back then in 1999 all of us three watched it together at my friend's house. It was unbelievable to see an impossible 3-foot eel, not only that but also the other part of the porn VHS tape showed a guy with 2 d*cks. I will tell my partner to check out the porn shop in Tokyo on his 2nd trip over there in this April.
 
Latascha said:
Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
The first four years it is the same for every child. After that, there are three different type of schools. The "Hauptschule" with another five years of education. After that you can look for a job. Then there is the "Realschule" with six more years of education, with slightly different subjects and a little higher standard. If you go that way you can either get a job afterwards, or transfer to another schoolprogram where you graduate from after another three years. With that you can at least go to a few collages, but your choice is very limited. Then you have the "Gymnasium". You attend from grade five to grade thirteen (for a few years now only until grade twelve). After that you can go to any college, university and study whatever you like. So it always was clear that I would go to such a school, where I'd have as many options as possible for later. Well, for deaf kids there is only ONE school in the whole country which offers this education and that was really far away, plus the reputation of that school is really bad. A no go for my parents, and I agree on that point. (Many people who went there didn't go to collage or just didn't make it, because the teachers were very easy on them, so they graduated without the required knowledge..) In Munich there is another school for deaf kids, but that is one with a two year system after which I could only choose from a very short list to study. Those are the only two schools existing in Germany for deaf kids with the option to go to university afterwards. Oh that one in Munich is not really for deaf kids. They have mixed classes and if you are lucky you are not the only deaf student out of 15. Actually there is a one pure deaf class each year with only a few students, but they have to attend school for one more year, learn everything only a lot slower and it really is stupid, because the teachers don't know any sign language. Maybe they know how to spell their own name, but even that is rare.
With all that in mind, I was mainstreamed and I really am grateful for it, besides the fact that it was hell, but not being allowed to attend college would've been worse. So after four really good years at school where I had a few friends, got along with my teacher I was enrolled in a "Gymnasium" with a good reputation. We were 37 children in one class, I knew no one besides a girl from my old class, who was my "friend" back then but very quickly turned her back on me.
The girls just ignored me most of the time, but the boys were really mean. I told more then one of my teachers, I told my parents, but I got all that crap many of you said already. "Boys will be boys....You have to learn to stand up for yourself...There is nothing wrong with being different. If they do treat you differently, they are not your true friends" It really didn't matter. True friends or no true friends, for a ten year old girl there are other things that matter like not having to eat lunch alone every single day. Not getting picked on everywhere, by older students, even some teachers.
I got older, my parents told me I should stand up for myself, so I did. Yeah, didn't work at all. After I stopped ignoring all those jerks it really got bad for two years. I actually was a good student, but that was over then, too. I started to ditch school which made everything worse actually. I was afraid to go home, because maybe someone had seen me or told my parents that I hadn't been in school. At the same time I got more and more scared of the idea to go back to that place and endure another single day.
I liked math, until one day my teacher laughed at me, because I pronounced something wrong. Along with her, the whole class started to giggle...Same thing happened in french a few times. Well, in french it happened to everybody, that was not that bad, at least I told myself that over and over, until I finally believed it. Geography was bad. The teacher had a full beard and was talking to the blackboard most of the time. When he asked something and I couldn't give him the right answer (he wouldn't repeat himself, I should just pay more attention) he threw pieces of chalk at me. My german teacher told me once in front of the whole class that I should try to make some friends and not shut everyone out...The more I think about it, the more memories pop up in my head. My classmates along with my "friends" loved to hide my things, throw my jacket out into the dirt (there are no lockers in german schools, you just have all your stuff with you the whole time), destroy papers I wrote,etc.
9th grade was different, finally. We were mixed and splitted into new, smaller classes and I somehow got lucky and only had to deal with a handful of jerks on a daily basis. Many of the new kids just ignored me and that was fine with me. I didn't like it, but it was way better, then the years before. Still, I didn't stop the ditching, I just hated that place and escaped as often as possible. My parents were absolutely clueless. I remember one day in 10th grade when my chemistry teacher wanted to talk to me in private. She took me to her lab and said that she was worried, because I had been sick a lot lately and that she was afraid that it would cause separation between me and the other students, that I would lose the connection to the rest of the class and that she didn't want that to happen. It sure felt like a slap in the face. That woman had never noticed anything, or remembered anything for that matter, because she was one of the teachers I had told about my random schoolday. I just smiled, told her that nothing had changed and left. The last two years were worse, again. But at that time I just focused on studying and repeated "It will be better once you get out of here" over and over and over. That's how I made it, I think. I didn't go to prom, I never set a foot into that school anymore.

Yes, I was able to turn all that into experience, it made me the person I am today, but NOBODY should have to go through something like that!
Being a teenager is hard, even as a privileged white male I'd say. To be different is not an easy thing, not when everyone around you tells you that you just have to try harder to fit in. The truth is you NEVER will! Hard thing for me to learn was that it is absolutely okay! In school I stopped wearing my HAs because I was afraid someone could notice and get another reason to make fun of me. If I wore them, I tried to hide them under my hair. Today I just sometimes choose to not wear them, but that is because I'm sick of all that noise.
Sometimes I still wonder who I can blame for all that. For all those years of torture I had to endure. Why wasn't there anybody to hear what I had to say? To believe the things I had to go through? Why didn't anyone help me?? And then I do have to stop myself from thinking: I know why, I just wasn't worth it.
At this point I get angry again. How is it possible, in a society which claims to call itself "tolerant" to have to deal with crap like that?!
Nobody should have to doubt him/herself for who he/she is. It is pretty sad actually.
Yes, all that experience is a reason for me to sometimes not like hearing people, to think all of them are ignorant! I do have to work on that, but it is really hard if I get one example after the other that my statement is totally correct.

There is not one school in Germany for deaf kids where teachers know and use german sign language. The best thing you can find around here is signed german in a few deaf schools. My husband went to a deaf school. There the deaf and HoH kids were separated, even during the break, out of fear the HoH could learn sign language and forget their speech. You know what's really bad? Most deaf kids don't know how to sign very well, but they don't know german very well either. They just don't have a language!!! That is still happening here! We are about twenty years behind the USA. (Ok, I'll stop right here, I'm getting OT)
Click to expand...

You have truly touched my heart with this post. What you survived was abusive. It was traumatic. It is a testament to your own personal strength to have survived it and be able to heal somewhat from it.

It is obvious to me that you are a very intelligent person. It is apparent in the way you express yourself and the depth of your thoughts and insight. What a horrible, horrible thing to take a child who is intelligent and capable, and turn them into a child that hates school. It is destruction of potential...and for what end? It is senseless.

Your anger is justified. You were exposed to abusive treatment that was completely unjustified. Of course you would be angry. You have every right to be angry. And I can see that you are not letting that anger eat you alive, though. You are trying to work through that anger. Holding onto the anger just gives those people from your past control over you today. In order to work through the anger, however, you first have to feel it. I would guess that you have already figured that out. The process is to feel it, to admit the injustice and the pain it caused you, to grieve for that poor, abused child, and then to let go of it.

I think I probably should let you know right now, so that it doesn't appear that I am trying to hide anything from you, that I am hearing. But the Deaf culture and the language are very much a valued part of my life. I treasure the friends I have made and the valuable things I have learned about life from my interactions with Deaf culture.

Yes, it would appear that Germany is far behind the U.S. in regard to deaf education. Your descrptions really put that into perspective. But in many places in the U.S., it remains just like you have described. There is no consistency and that is a problem in and of itself. With more hearing parents choosing oral only educational placement for their kids, I have the fear that, in the next few years, we will start to see a regression in deaf ed here rather than progress. I can already see signs of that happening.

It has been very nice meeting you, and I hope I have the opportunity to get to know you much better with time.
 
Latascha said:
Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
The first four years it is the same for every child. After that, there are three different type of schools. The "Hauptschule" with another five years of education. After that you can look for a job. Then there is the "Realschule" with six more years of education, with slightly different subjects and a little higher standard. If you go that way you can either get a job afterwards, or transfer to another schoolprogram where you graduate from after another three years. With that you can at least go to a few collages, but your choice is very limited. Then you have the "Gymnasium". You attend from grade five to grade thirteen (for a few years now only until grade twelve). After that you can go to any college, university and study whatever you like. So it always was clear that I would go to such a school, where I'd have as many options as possible for later. Well, for deaf kids there is only ONE school in the whole country which offers this education and that was really far away, plus the reputation of that school is really bad. A no go for my parents, and I agree on that point. (Many people who went there didn't go to collage or just didn't make it, because the teachers were very easy on them, so they graduated without the required knowledge..) In Munich there is another school for deaf kids, but that is one with a two year system after which I could only choose from a very short list to study. Those are the only two schools existing in Germany for deaf kids with the option to go to university afterwards. Oh that one in Munich is not really for deaf kids. They have mixed classes and if you are lucky you are not the only deaf student out of 15. Actually there is a one pure deaf class each year with only a few students, but they have to attend school for one more year, learn everything only a lot slower and it really is stupid, because the teachers don't know any sign language. Maybe they know how to spell their own name, but even that is rare.
With all that in mind, I was mainstreamed and I really am grateful for it, besides the fact that it was hell, but not being allowed to attend college would've been worse. So after four really good years at school where I had a few friends, got along with my teacher I was enrolled in a "Gymnasium" with a good reputation. We were 37 children in one class, I knew no one besides a girl from my old class, who was my "friend" back then but very quickly turned her back on me.
The girls just ignored me most of the time, but the boys were really mean. I told more then one of my teachers, I told my parents, but I got all that crap many of you said already. "Boys will be boys....You have to learn to stand up for yourself...There is nothing wrong with being different. If they do treat you differently, they are not your true friends" It really didn't matter. True friends or no true friends, for a ten year old girl there are other things that matter like not having to eat lunch alone every single day. Not getting picked on everywhere, by older students, even some teachers.
I got older, my parents told me I should stand up for myself, so I did. Yeah, didn't work at all. After I stopped ignoring all those jerks it really got bad for two years. I actually was a good student, but that was over then, too. I started to ditch school which made everything worse actually. I was afraid to go home, because maybe someone had seen me or told my parents that I hadn't been in school. At the same time I got more and more scared of the idea to go back to that place and endure another single day.
I liked math, until one day my teacher laughed at me, because I pronounced something wrong. Along with her, the whole class started to giggle...Same thing happened in french a few times. Well, in french it happened to everybody, that was not that bad, at least I told myself that over and over, until I finally believed it. Geography was bad. The teacher had a full beard and was talking to the blackboard most of the time. When he asked something and I couldn't give him the right answer (he wouldn't repeat himself, I should just pay more attention) he threw pieces of chalk at me. My german teacher told me once in front of the whole class that I should try to make some friends and not shut everyone out...The more I think about it, the more memories pop up in my head. My classmates along with my "friends" loved to hide my things, throw my jacket out into the dirt (there are no lockers in german schools, you just have all your stuff with you the whole time), destroy papers I wrote,etc.
9th grade was different, finally. We were mixed and splitted into new, smaller classes and I somehow got lucky and only had to deal with a handful of jerks on a daily basis. Many of the new kids just ignored me and that was fine with me. I didn't like it, but it was way better, then the years before. Still, I didn't stop the ditching, I just hated that place and escaped as often as possible. My parents were absolutely clueless. I remember one day in 10th grade when my chemistry teacher wanted to talk to me in private. She took me to her lab and said that she was worried, because I had been sick a lot lately and that she was afraid that it would cause separation between me and the other students, that I would lose the connection to the rest of the class and that she didn't want that to happen. It sure felt like a slap in the face. That woman had never noticed anything, or remembered anything for that matter, because she was one of the teachers I had told about my random schoolday. I just smiled, told her that nothing had changed and left. The last two years were worse, again. But at that time I just focused on studying and repeated "It will be better once you get out of here" over and over and over. That's how I made it, I think. I didn't go to prom, I never set a foot into that school anymore.

Yes, I was able to turn all that into experience, it made me the person I am today, but NOBODY should have to go through something like that!
Being a teenager is hard, even as a privileged white male I'd say. To be different is not an easy thing, not when everyone around you tells you that you just have to try harder to fit in. The truth is you NEVER will! Hard thing for me to learn was that it is absolutely okay! In school I stopped wearing my HAs because I was afraid someone could notice and get another reason to make fun of me. If I wore them, I tried to hide them under my hair. Today I just sometimes choose to not wear them, but that is because I'm sick of all that noise.
Sometimes I still wonder who I can blame for all that. For all those years of torture I had to endure. Why wasn't there anybody to hear what I had to say? To believe the things I had to go through? Why didn't anyone help me?? And then I do have to stop myself from thinking: I know why, I just wasn't worth it.
At this point I get angry again. How is it possible, in a society which claims to call itself "tolerant" to have to deal with crap like that?!
Nobody should have to doubt him/herself for who he/she is. It is pretty sad actually.
Yes, all that experience is a reason for me to sometimes not like hearing people, to think all of them are ignorant! I do have to work on that, but it is really hard if I get one example after the other that my statement is totally correct.

There is not one school in Germany for deaf kids where teachers know and use german sign language. The best thing you can find around here is signed german in a few deaf schools. My husband went to a deaf school. There the deaf and HoH kids were separated, even during the break, out of fear the HoH could learn sign language and forget their speech. You know what's really bad? Most deaf kids don't know how to sign very well, but they don't know german very well either. They just don't have a language!!! That is still happening here! We are about twenty years behind the USA. (Ok, I'll stop right here, I'm getting OT)
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Are you serious??? Wow, I don't know much of anything like that you mentioned about deaf school system and most Deafies do not sign well in German and its language? I am shocked about it. I had visited Germany for the first time a year ago for Oktoberfest in Munich and I have met so many Deaf Germans and picked up some of their Deutsch Signs in conversation. They invited me to join them to the Deaf club and other night at the night club (Klaus?) after the Oktoberfest deaf gathering, I saw so many Deaf my age and I thought watching them awesomely signing in German. I have an acquaintance Deaf friend who moved here in New York from Germany about 15 years ago. Maybe one day I should ask him more about what it is like living as a deaf in Germany and all. I thought school for the deaf and other school seems okay I have heard that schools in Germany are one of the best in the world.
 
jillio said:
it is so amazing how the "deaf experience" contains so many likenesses no matter where or how you were raised. That experience is a constant for deaf kids everywhere. And it is the most difficult thing to get hearing parents to accept. They always have, "my my child will be different!" ready to pop out of their mouths. No, your child is not different. Your child will also have the sameness of the deaf experience, no matter what device they use or don't use. And one day, we will see your child, whom you claimed was going to be oh! So different as a result of technology and your super-human powers as a parent, posting on forum just like this and saying the same things that the d/d adults are saying today.

Here's the thing...a deaf child is going to live the deaf experience, period. Assistive devices don't change that, advances in technnology don't change that, keeping them in an oral environment and a mainstreamed or oral school does not change that. They are deaf and they will have the deaf experience in their lives.

However, it doesn't have to be a horrible experience if you provide for their needs as a deaf child. Addressing a deaf child's needs from a hearing perspective is what creates all of the negative experience deaf adults describe from their childhood. It changes to a positive after they discover deaf culture, signed language, and a community of their peeers. The whole of the deaf experience becomes a sense of pride instead of shame, a sense of belonging instead of being excluded, a sense of being whole instead of broken,

most of the d/deaf adults on this forum had to wait until they became adults and no longer had to abbide by the decisions their hearing parents made for them to find this positive deaf experience. But it doesn't have to be that way.that is something we can change at any time in any generation. All it takes is to provide for the deaf child's needs as a deaf child. Empower them now, not later.
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afreakingmen!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
jillio said:
You have truly touched my heart with this post. What you survived was abusive. It was traumatic. It is a testament to your own personal strength to have survived it and be able to heal somewhat from it.

It is obvious to me that you are a very intelligent person. It is apparent in the way you express yourself and the depth of your thoughts and insight. What a horrible, horrible thing to take a child who is intelligent and capable, and turn them into a child that hates school. It is destruction of potential...and for what end? It is senseless.

Your anger is justified. You were exposed to abusive treatment that was completely unjustified. Of course you would be angry. You have every right to be angry. And I can see that you are not letting that anger eat you alive, though. You are trying to work through that anger. Holding onto the anger just gives those people from your past control over you today. In order to work through the anger, however, you first have to feel it. I would guess that you have already figured that out. The process is to feel it, to admit the injustice and the pain it caused you, to grieve for that poor, abused child, and then to let go of it.

I think I probably should let you know right now, so that it doesn't appear that I am trying to hide anything from you, that I am hearing. But the Deaf culture and the language are very much a valued part of my life. I treasure the friends I have made and the valuable things I have learned about life from my interactions with Deaf culture.

Yes, it would appear that Germany is far behind the U.S. in regard to deaf education. Your descrptions really put that into perspective. But in many places in the U.S., it remains just like you have described. There is no consistency and that is a problem in and of itself. With more hearing parents choosing oral only educational placement for their kids, I have the fear that, in the next few years, we will start to see a regression in deaf ed here rather than progress. I can already see signs of that happening.

It has been very nice meeting you, and I hope I have the opportunity to get to know you much better with time.
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I do have to say that I think that mainstreaming can be abusive. God it gave ME PSTD. I am never ever ever going to go a high school reunion, b/c it was SO bad! It angers me SO much that mainstreaming and inclusion is painted as some sort of glorious utopia, or something innovative. It's NOT and never has been! Yes, there are a handful of kids who have done well overall (meaning they only need minimal accomondations, and don't even have social issues) but overall kids are struggling and are misrable socially....
ANd yes, I hear you. But I think on the other hand that there are going to be a lot of parents who chose sign and deaf schools b/c their siblings or friends may have had really negative mainstream experiances. I do think a lot of parents are out of touch about the downside of mainstreaming, and don't understand that their kid could do so much better at a deaf school.
 
deafdyke said:
I do have to say that I think that mainstreaming can be abusive. God it gave ME PSTD. I am never ever ever going to go a high school reunion, b/c it was SO bad! It angers me SO much that mainstreaming and inclusion is painted as some sort of glorious utopia, or something innovative. It's NOT and never has been! Yes, there are a handful of kids who have done well overall (meaning they only need minimal accomondations, and don't even have social issues) but overall kids are struggling and are misrable socially....
ANd yes, I hear you. But I think on the other hand that there are going to be a lot of parents who chose sign and deaf schools b/c their siblings or friends may have had really negative mainstream experiances. I do think a lot of parents are out of touch about the downside of mainstreaming, and don't understand that their kid could do so much better at a deaf school.
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If the mainstream schools want inclusive, they ought to use ASL. They are going about it so wrong.
 
katz4life said:
the other part of the porn VHS tape showed a guy with 2 d*cks.
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My friend had 5.....his pants fit like a glove.

Originally Posted by Latascha
Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
The first four years it is the same for every child. After that, there are three different type of schools. The "Hauptschule" with another five years of education. After that you can look for a job. Then there is the "Realschule" with six more years of education, with slightly different subjects and a little higher standard. If you go that way you can either get a job afterwards, or transfer to another schoolprogram where you graduate from after another three years. With that you can at least go to a few collages, but your choice is very limited. Then you have the "Gymnasium". You attend from grade five to grade thirteen (for a few years now only until grade twelve). After that you can go to any college, university and study whatever you like. So it always was clear that I would go to such a school, where I'd have as many options as possible for later. Well, for deaf kids there is only ONE school in the whole country which offers this education and that was really far away, plus the reputation of that school is really bad. A no go for my parents, and I agree on that point. (Many people who went there didn't go to collage or just didn't make it, because the teachers were very easy on them, so they graduated without the required knowledge..) In Munich there is another school for deaf kids, but that is one with a two year system after which I could only choose from a very short list to study. Those are the only two schools existing in Germany for deaf kids with the option to go to university afterwards. Oh that one in Munich is not really for deaf kids. They have mixed classes and if you are lucky you are not the only deaf student out of 15. Actually there is a one pure deaf class each year with only a few students, but they have to attend school for one more year, learn everything only a lot slower and it really is stupid, because the teachers don't know any sign language. Maybe they know how to spell their own name, but even that is rare.
With all that in mind, I was mainstreamed and I really am grateful for it, besides the fact that it was hell, but not being allowed to attend college would've been worse. So after four really good years at school where I had a few friends, got along with my teacher I was enrolled in a "Gymnasium" with a good reputation. We were 37 children in one class, I knew no one besides a girl from my old class, who was my "friend" back then but very quickly turned her back on me.
The girls just ignored me most of the time, but the boys were really mean. I told more then one of my teachers, I told my parents, but I got all that crap many of you said already. "Boys will be boys....You have to learn to stand up for yourself...There is nothing wrong with being different. If they do treat you differently, they are not your true friends" It really didn't matter. True friends or no true friends, for a ten year old girl there are other things that matter like not having to eat lunch alone every single day. Not getting picked on everywhere, by older students, even some teachers.
I got older, my parents told me I should stand up for myself, so I did. Yeah, didn't work at all. After I stopped ignoring all those jerks it really got bad for two years. I actually was a good student, but that was over then, too. I started to ditch school which made everything worse actually. I was afraid to go home, because maybe someone had seen me or told my parents that I hadn't been in school. At the same time I got more and more scared of the idea to go back to that place and endure another single day.
I liked math, until one day my teacher laughed at me, because I pronounced something wrong. Along with her, the whole class started to giggle...Same thing happened in french a few times. Well, in french it happened to everybody, that was not that bad, at least I told myself that over and over, until I finally believed it. Geography was bad. The teacher had a full beard and was talking to the blackboard most of the time. When he asked something and I couldn't give him the right answer (he wouldn't repeat himself, I should just pay more attention) he threw pieces of chalk at me. My german teacher told me once in front of the whole class that I should try to make some friends and not shut everyone out...The more I think about it, the more memories pop up in my head. My classmates along with my "friends" loved to hide my things, throw my jacket out into the dirt (there are no lockers in german schools, you just have all your stuff with you the whole time), destroy papers I wrote,etc.
9th grade was different, finally. We were mixed and splitted into new, smaller classes and I somehow got lucky and only had to deal with a handful of jerks on a daily basis. Many of the new kids just ignored me and that was fine with me. I didn't like it, but it was way better, then the years before. Still, I didn't stop the ditching, I just hated that place and escaped as often as possible. My parents were absolutely clueless. I remember one day in 10th grade when my chemistry teacher wanted to talk to me in private. She took me to her lab and said that she was worried, because I had been sick a lot lately and that she was afraid that it would cause separation between me and the other students, that I would lose the connection to the rest of the class and that she didn't want that to happen. It sure felt like a slap in the face. That woman had never noticed anything, or remembered anything for that matter, because she was one of the teachers I had told about my random schoolday. I just smiled, told her that nothing had changed and left. The last two years were worse, again. But at that time I just focused on studying and repeated "It will be better once you get out of here" over and over and over. That's how I made it, I think. I didn't go to prom, I never set a foot into that school anymore.

Yes, I was able to turn all that into experience, it made me the person I am today, but NOBODY should have to go through something like that!
Being a teenager is hard, even as a privileged white male I'd say. To be different is not an easy thing, not when everyone around you tells you that you just have to try harder to fit in. The truth is you NEVER will! Hard thing for me to learn was that it is absolutely okay! In school I stopped wearing my HAs because I was afraid someone could notice and get another reason to make fun of me. If I wore them, I tried to hide them under my hair. Today I just sometimes choose to not wear them, but that is because I'm sick of all that noise.
Sometimes I still wonder who I can blame for all that. For all those years of torture I had to endure. Why wasn't there anybody to hear what I had to say? To believe the things I had to go through? Why didn't anyone help me?? And then I do have to stop myself from thinking: I know why, I just wasn't worth it.
At this point I get angry again. How is it possible, in a society which claims to call itself "tolerant" to have to deal with crap like that?!
Nobody should have to doubt him/herself for who he/she is. It is pretty sad actually.
Yes, all that experience is a reason for me to sometimes not like hearing people, to think all of them are ignorant! I do have to work on that, but it is really hard if I get one example after the other that my statement is totally correct.

There is not one school in Germany for deaf kids where teachers know and use german sign language. The best thing you can find around here is signed german in a few deaf schools. My husband went to a deaf school. There the deaf and HoH kids were separated, even during the break, out of fear the HoH could learn sign language and forget their speech. You know what's really bad? Most deaf kids don't know how to sign very well, but they don't know german very well either. They just don't have a language!!! That is still happening here! We are about twenty years behind the USA. (Ok, I'll stop right here, I'm getting OT)
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:ty: for sharing
 
Latascha said:
Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
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Latasha, thank you for sharing your story. You show a remarkable strength of character. It's amazing how our stories have so many similarities despite being from different countries. And it's really sad that so many deaf people around the world think they are the only ones with these struggles. Sharing our stories is one way we can come together. We are stronger when we join together. We are better having you with us! :)
 
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