For Late-deafened

[AJWSmith]

Hello everyone... I'm new here. I'm hearing but my daughter who is 20 is deaf. Or from this thread, "late deaf" as she was first diagnosed with hearing loss 18 months ago.
I suspect that it was actually around grade 5 when she began having difficulty in school. Her teacher and I just put it down to being a child of divorce, etc. Because my voice is very strong and clear we never realized she had a problem until I remarried and my husband has a very deep baratone voice quality. Little Girl didn't hear a thing he said. That's when we clued in. Since the first audiogram she's lost all but 5%. Even then she has days if she has a headache or cold, etc. the hearing is gone altogether. Dr's have no answers.

We've been taking ASL classes from a deaf instructor for the past 3 months and have begun to use it as our primary language in the home now. Even my hearing husband and I are talking to one another we use sign when my daughter is in the room.

There is a very long thread here on AllDeaf specifically for late-deafened people called Adjustment to late onset deafness. I recommend you and your daughter to read it.
You can find it in the 'Our World, Our Culture' forum (link)

 

[Beach girl]

In the meantime, though, welcome to Alldeaf, and congrats on learning sign languge for your daughter's sake. How is she doing with it?

 

[Pollypan]

Thank you for the welcome. And AJWSmith, thanks for the link. I will print it off and read it right away. As far as the ASL is concerned, we are learning it at a good pace and are using it as much as possible. Of course we aren't fluent in it, yet but we get our point accross to one another. The important thing is that we aren't afraid to make mistakes and if we don't know a sign we try our best to figure it out before we fingerspell. Our instructor is amazing!!!

This weeks homework assignment has been creating an ABC ASL story to present to the class on Thursday. It's been interesting.

 

[glickchick]

I'm 19, and lost all of my hearing last summer -- So I guess we are kind of like members of the same club

-Lauren

 

[Daragild]

Late deafened since 22, I'm 24 now, been gradually getting worse since the beginning. My ENT has given up and told me I'm just going to have to be comfortable being HOH and eventually deaf. Now that Ive learned ASL, and now looking into ISL, I'm more comfortable with it. But rapid hearing loss smack in the middle of a Four year fine arts degree is rough!