Deaf Hearing Relationships
- Thread starter jackayee
- Start date
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- Oct 31, 2007
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My spouse of ten years is a hearie who has learned ASL.
I'm late deafened and speak, but I have a deaf sister and am fluent with ASL. I was 20 years hard-of-hearing before I became totally deaf, so I sort of read lips. Then I took speechreading classes at Montana School for the Deaf and got better at it.
When we converse, we speak and sign. I can read her lips best of anyone. She's great to face me and speak not too fast and not too slowly, and repeats whenever I ask. In poor lighting or when she's silhouetted, I depend more on sign than speechreading.
With other hearies, I do best speechreading one-to-one, but with some strangers, my speechreading ability falls to 50% or worse, so my spouse volunteers to help me when I have trouble understanding.
Patience on both our parts helps communications. We're older, so good evening at home are often silent--Blu-Ray movies with SDH, beer
and popcorn
.
I'm late deafened and speak, but I have a deaf sister and am fluent with ASL. I was 20 years hard-of-hearing before I became totally deaf, so I sort of read lips. Then I took speechreading classes at Montana School for the Deaf and got better at it.
When we converse, we speak and sign. I can read her lips best of anyone. She's great to face me and speak not too fast and not too slowly, and repeats whenever I ask. In poor lighting or when she's silhouetted, I depend more on sign than speechreading.
With other hearies, I do best speechreading one-to-one, but with some strangers, my speechreading ability falls to 50% or worse, so my spouse volunteers to help me when I have trouble understanding.
Patience on both our parts helps communications. We're older, so good evening at home are often silent--Blu-Ray movies with SDH, beer
and popcorn.
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