Hello!
I am Cave Woman... Because no one knew I was deaf until I was seven and a half! I went through church and the first 6 weeks of the first grade (AND kindergarten) without knowing what was going on NOR why I was there in the first place.
My memories of that time are still crystal-clear. I can still remember looking at easter eggs, toys, the bathtub toy that hung off the tub faucet, the cars that my parents drove in, the house we lived in, etc. without knowing that they were supposed to have names. I did not know the concept of time nor how to read a clock until I was past 9 years old. My Dad taught me how to read a clock that was hanging at a tire repair station across the diagonal corner from an HEB grocery store in south Texas. There was that absence of language and simply living, simply being. I can still access it, even in dreams when most of them don't involve language, just seeing each other or other people and doing things without saying anything. Like the inner voice is shut off during the dreams sometimes.
It has been a BITCH. Because I never developed refined relationship skills at the critical age, I was consigned to relationship failures and never being able to connect with people in the usual way. I would be right at home with cave people before they developed language.
As I have mentioned before, this worldview of a child that normally dies or goes dormant after being 3 years old never did, and it remained strong all these years because it was too late by the time I was found to be deaf. I can still remember before 3 years of age, when I was with Mom and Dad on a plane flight to go to my grandmother's funeral who died during the Christmas holidays. At one point, I was crawling on the aisle floor on hands and knees, and I was still small enough to look straight ahead under the seats to either side, and look up at an elderly couple who looked back at me in amused smiles. And the beautiful hostess in her blue uniform and blue cap, face made up and smiling at me. Then Mom sitting in the aisle seat on the right side of the plane and pointing out at the approaching ground covered in snow and the trees relatively uncovered (apparently, it snowed days before and the wind had blown the snow off over time). Dad was sitting in the seat to her right. I have a LOT of memories from this time forward.
This kind of linguistic isolation has created pretty unique effects on me.