Hearing families & Deaf children

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julysun

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In an article someone posted here, the article was talking about a movie & said that only 3 percent of hearing parents of deaf children will learn sign languge.

Why??

If a deaf child is supposed to learn to speak - why shouldn't a hearing parent learn to sign?

Does anyone know if that statistic is right?
 
i am one those people whose family force me to talk to them, but they won't learn to sign for me. Now that I been raise this way, it is too uncomfortable to sign around my family.

seriously, it only take them a year or two to learn the basic sign language, while it take us deaf many years to learn to communicate with hearing. And I still have trouble communication with my family. I don't even bother talking to them anymore because it is just too overwhelming.
 
My family is the opposite. My parents know sign and so do several of my cousins, aunts and uncles yet I'm the only one who is deaf in the family.
 
I'm not deaf per se, but my parents never signed to me when I was younger. As my hearing has gotten worse, my mother (who has some basic signing ability) has started signing when I just don't understand what she says after the fourth time or so. My sister does the same.

My dad and my brother don't sign at all.

It's interesting, for a while we thought my brother might be deaf, or mute at the very least, and thus we communicated with him by signing... Since he started talking, he and my dad have forgotten everything they ever knew in that regard, and my mother and sister have forgotten most (though my sister has retained more than my mother).

At this point in time I'm unquestionably the best signer in the family, though I use it on a day-to-day basis for communication at RIT, so that is to be expected, I guess.
 
You're right, very few parents would learn to sign. Most don't bother.

I'm one of the lucky few whose mother and few sisters can sign. I remember in high school, there were like 10 student whose parents can sign. So yeah, that's not many.
 
It remind me of my hubby's parents... It's very sad situation.

My hubby's parents and every parents protest against school for the deaf to ban sign language because they want their children learn to speak all the time... That's how my hubby grow up oral... Sign language is not allow at school... His parents don't like to see my hubby sign with other friends when they come to vist because they beleive sign language would affect speech development. My hubby ignored his parents to sign with me and told them that they has to accept the fact that he is deaf and want sign.

The same school where my hubby went, are allow to use sign language now because every parents protest against school for the deaf to allow their children to use sign language at last... Their parents learn to sign, too. I :applause: parents for accept their deaf children... and learn their languages.
 
Well I think that part of the reason why so few parents learn Sign is b/c many hearing parents don't consciously choose ASL in the first place. Many of the ASLer users are oral failures. I really do think that many of the parents out there who chose oral, are burnt out from the intensity of the oral approach. The oral approach is VERY intensive...... like speech therapy every single waking hour. Maybe also it's hard for hearing parents to undy the syntax and grammar of ASL.
 
deafdyke said:
Well I think that part of the reason why so few parents learn Sign is b/c many hearing parents don't consciously choose ASL in the first place. Many of the ASLer users are oral failures. I really do think that many of the parents out there who chose oral, are burnt out from the intensity of the oral approach. The oral approach is VERY intensive...... like speech therapy every single waking hour. Maybe also it's hard for hearing parents to undy the syntax and grammar of ASL.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that to learn ASL properly, it takes years of study just as it did for me with Spanish (8 years and STILL not really comfortable in conversation...go figure!). What is your suggestion to parents in the interim while their language skills aren't up to par yet, and they have a child who's in an important stage for language learning?
 
Rose Immortal said:
My understanding is that to learn ASL properly, it takes years of study just as it did for me with Spanish (8 years and STILL not really comfortable in conversation...go figure!). What is your suggestion to parents in the interim while their language skills aren't up to par yet, and they have a child who's in an important stage for language learning?
Click to expand...

Cued English/CS



http://www.cuedspeech.org/
 
What is your suggestion to parents in the interim while their language skills aren't up to par yet, and they have a child who's in an important stage for language learning?
Click to expand...
Well I'm not suggesting to throw the speech therapy out with the bathwater. I think Cued speech is a good starting point for a stopgap measure.Also think that the hearing parents should go with a " all possible modalities" mentality at least initally for the first few Early Intervention years, until they find which modality is best for their kid. The debate now really isn't about methodology any more. It is more about which language should be the first langauge for a dhh kid.
 
I grew up since I became deaf when I turned in 3 yrs old. I went to oral school, I dont understand people's talking since because I been sick for almost whole of 3 years with named of M, something too long to spell. But my mom put me in Oral School, she thought I can talk and read the lips but found out that I cant understand. She decided to send me to classes for deaf people so I can learn sign langauge, my family know how to sign and spell abc's of course BUT my grandpa begged my mom to taking me to Tenn and my mom did so I almost got ceclor implant in there when I was maybe 4 yrs old or so but doctor told my mom that she have to choose, if I get ceclor implant, I have around 60% or so chance to become retard. So, my mom decided to rather to keeping me as deaf instead of become retard and deaf, until I became older and my mom asked me AGAIN if I want to having ceclor implant and I said no. I am proud for being deaf. Im glad that my parents knew sign language. Also, I felt bad for mostly of deaf people's parents wont admit to learning sign language. Its very sad...
 
I think that it is very sad and unfortunate that so many hearing parents dont learn to sign. One family I know only knows fingerspelling the ABC's, and the numbers 1 to 10. There is 1 Deaf person in that family. The other family I know, all of the family members can sign practically fluently, and it too only has 1 Deaf family member. I guess it just depends on how bad people care about communicating with their children. I wouldnt even think twice if I had a Deaf child, I WOULD be learning to sign. (But I already know it. ;) )
 
deafdyke said:
Maybe also it's hard for hearing parents to undy the syntax and grammar of ASL.
Click to expand...

Are you kidding me? There's no grammar at all in ASL. LOL! :)

-J.
 
Yeah, I'm one of them that experienced this with my hearing family. They only knew fingerspelling and maybe 4-5 signs. It really sucks. But it wasn't all bad seldlomly but they should have learned signs .. they even knew that.

I was real disappointed and bit angry at times .. always so fustrated and emotional. The real irony in their part that all of them are highly educated so why didn't they have had the ability to pick up signs and learnt. Quite a waste.

Later in the times (past) they admitted they made this that huge mistake and are still feeling so guilty about it. Even my sibings were talking about that on last xmas trip where my wife and I went to the Far North. They said they felt so bad.

I grew up at a deaf residential school. My mother was divorced twice in my early childhood that she had to work 2 jobs and had not much time to try learn signs. In my high school time she went to night school for the nursing degree that killed the last opportunity. Time flew by. They ended up using fingerspellings for life after that. We are not as close as it could be if they learned signs, obv.

The only one thing came out as my great advantage by these fingerpellings .. fingerspellings .. fingerspellings was that it greatly improved my english and spelling skills. I even perfected spelling tests twice lol. And that I passed the english and writing tests on my 1st time attempt at Gallaudet Univ. where more than often the deaf students didn't pass and had to take non-credit english till they pass these tests there. Naturally, many deaf students were and are well-known for that, you all know. But I would trade that (fingerspellings) for the signs with my family to share, absolutely. Well that goes poof so that's rather so sad. So what can I do? Hmm.

Yeah, I knew that lot of hearing families who had 1 deaf in them didn't bother to learn signs .. often little fingerspelling or less. I knew that several hearing families did use signs that envied me sometimes (shrugged lol). I just became adapted to accept the rude blunt fact out of it and go on with life the easier it became. Obviously, there were/are many numbers that experienced the same with mine.

Thought that it should be a kind of law or some kind to enforce hearing parents to learn signs or something like that. I believe it helps. In fact it's easier for hearing parents to learn signs than the deaf would on speeching skills. They don't have to learn ASL but at least more than enough signs will do, really. They would be better off and easier.

I'm not sure about the 3% percent as julysun asking as if it's true. Maybe it did apply for those back in 1980s and back. It may seem like that but I think it's actually about 10% nowadays I would wildly guess. No real scientific polls done. But I'm sure the percent reduces nowadays, however.
 
deafdyke said:
The debate now really isn't about methodology any more. It is more about which language should be the first langauge for a dhh kid.
Click to expand...


IMO, a child should be given the opportunity to learn the langaue that THEIR family uses.
 
Agreed......Kids should be fluent in their family's native language. However, that should not exclude learning another language. If a hearing family makes the demand that a dhh kid HAS to learn how to hear and speak, then they should meet the dhh kid halfway and learn ASL. Yes, it's hard for hearing parents to learn ASL.....and YES it DOES have grammar and syntax. If it was just a matter of memorizing a bunch of signs and stringing them together, parents wouldn't have any trouble at all learning ASL!
However it is just AS hard for dhh kids to learn spoken English, especially the pronouncation (deaf voices anyone?) and the grammar (I remmy reading in Oticon's Communication Booklet, that it's VERY VERY common for oral deaf kids to have such poor spoken language skills that they say stuff like " How many spiders have legs?" for " How many legs do spiders have?"
 
deafdyke said:
Well I'm not suggesting to throw the speech therapy out with the bathwater. I think Cued speech is a good starting point for a stopgap measure.Also think that the hearing parents should go with a " all possible modalities" mentality at least initally for the first few Early Intervention years, until they find which modality is best for their kid. The debate now really isn't about methodology any more. It is more about which language should be the first langauge for a dhh kid.
Click to expand...

That does make a lot of sense--no way to know which is best without trying everything.

I think I'm just very anal about language-learning since I spent so long studying one...I'm one of those that takes the "if you do it, do it RIGHT" approach. I'd figure it wouldn't help a kid if I were teaching bad ASL--plus I'd be disappointed in myself if I were to stop at that level.

P.S.: My kid's getting a 2nd language no matter what, and I'll make sure to expose him/her to experts to make sure it's done right (after all, I know I have my bad habits and areas I'm still not good with!).
 
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