Did your (hearing) parents learn to sign?

Did your parents learn to sign?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 12 28.6%

  • No.

    Votes: 19 45.2%

  • One did, one didn't.

    Votes: 1 2.4%

  • Tried, but never got past the basics.

    Votes: 7 16.7%

  • None of your options fit me.

    Votes: 3 7.1%
  • Total voters
    42
niece i never see..my son learnt .he thought wearing clarinet and learning sign would help him pull the girls he was young teenager at the time he came to deaf club hearing children deaf parent..he do use it if i dont pick up what going on. he find it helpful he did a course for medic's and daughter did makaton before i went deaf..some of the others spell.
 
Both of my parents never sign because I could talk and lipread them. They thought they don't need to sign as I can do it for them, which mean that they wanted me to go all the way with oral method. They were suppose to learn to sign and go half way with me and I was suppose to sign with them half way. But no, they wanted their own way better than my way. I was frustrated both at home and at mainstream schools. My sister only fingerspell, no sign words. **sigh**
 
Wow, thanks everyone for answering. I'm sorry to hear some of these awful and frustrating stories, but I really appreciate you telling them and (/or) doing the poll.

I never thought about parents who tried to learn but just couldn't get it. Learning about them should increase my tolerance and patience a little. I hope! (That's always very easy to say and very hard to do.)

This is also making me wonder about the ones who don't try. I always imagined people with attitude problems or who'd been brainwashed by the oralists. But I wonder if some of them, if they tried, would have ended up in the ""tried but couldn't get it" group. And on some level had a sense of that. I say this because when I think of my own strengths and weaknesses (I'm very good at math and learning languages, but I think if I tried to learn to fix a car from now until the day I die I'd never get it. And when I try to watch the news I feel like someone's drilling a hole through my head.) I find that my interests often line up with my abilities. If a mathematical idea comes up in conversation, my attention perks up. When I first saw people signing I was so blown away I think I tripped over something. But if you try to show me how spark plugs work, I start to feel nauseous and at some point I realize I stopped paying attention 5 minutes ago. Didn't mean to!
 
They are learning now! Its very fun to help them and watch them learn.
 
Yes -- parents and sister learned to sign but never got fluent at it.. I've tried encouraging them to take classes & meet other Deaf people but they never wanted to make the time for it. :( So that ends up I kinda withdrew from them and got closer more with Deaf friends than my own family.
 
Back
Top