Of course you were. It is natural. The problem is, hearing parents don't seem to grasp the fact that when they are told their child is deaf, part of the reaction they have (even when they hide and deny the most natural feelings in the world) is based on the fact that their child is different from them. They have no idea what to do with a deaf child. They know what to do with a hearing child, because they are hearing. They have been a hearing child. That is why I believe that it is so important that hearing parents turn to the deaf community to discover what it is to be a deaf child, and what a deaf child needs for optimal development and growth. Deaf adults have been deaf children. They are the only ones who know, first hand, what it is to be a deaf child.
The parents who fail to do this are the ones that spend their child's entire life trying to make them more like a hearing child. They try to change the child. The ones who do it not only accept their child's deafness, they embrace it. They are the ones that change themselves, not the child.
