AmyJ
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have very carefully researched and considered all the manual coding options, and I really feel like ASL (or at least as ASL-like as my English-thinking brain will allow) is the best fit for our family. Since one of my long-term goals is that my girls have access to the Deaf community if they so choose, then I feel like I would be doing them a disservice by teaching them anything else. I want them to have sign as a language.
Also, my daughter's current spoken English language is *excellent*, including vocabulary usage and sentence structure over a year ahead of her chonological age (yes, a severely HOH child that went unaided until one month before testing at age 4 and tested *ahead* of age appropriate levels). I don't think she needs sign to understand the English language word order, she doing fine with that. It's whole concepts that I think it would help with and that benefit comes from ASL as much if not more (I am thinking the signs for "car" in ASL vs. the initialized signs for all the different vehicles in SEE, car, truck, van, etc.) than it would with SEE. That is why I am having such a hard time convincing 'professionals' she needs any kind of support at all, she copes too well! She does have some delays in other areas, but since they average the scores, she comes out "age appropriate" even though there is as much as a 2 year gap between some of her language skills. I just wonder what she would be like without hearing loss! My (hearing) son was reading on a fifth grade level at the end of 1st grade, so I have no doubt her language skills would be way up there had she had the same access to language he did.
Thank for you again comments! I appreciate the insight! Glad you and shel90 connected too!
jillio, I would be curious as too your "various and sundry reasons" if you would be comfortable sharing. If you want to email me off the board, that would be fine. Thanks!
