What Would You Say To Your Parents Today?

whatdidyousay! said:
My mother did not read books to us at bed time , I read them to myself. Mom was feeling so guilty about not being able to stop dad from abusing me that she just left me on my own . I would love to had asked my dad why he kept telling people that horrible joke about a farmer having a jackass that he send all over the world and it came home a jackass, then dad would say that is 'me' , I am the jackass! I guess I would tell my dad to 'F' off if he was alive today !
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:( I am so sorry that this happened to you. You turned out alright today. What do you think contributes to that?
 
I agree with SilverRoxy. Remember that diamonds are forged under pressure and mud is made on the surface. :) I know that doesn't make it feel any better, just know that you are better, and you deserved better.
 
whatdidyousay! said:
When I went to college I was given a vocabulary test and I tested at eleven grade level and I said to my teacher that is really bad . I was told that it was very good for someone HOH that had a poor education . I did a lot of reading as child and teenager . I was in the reject class so we did not have to do book reports like the students in regular class . I read just about all of John Steinbeck as a teenager. I agree with you reading is so importance . And I am so happy you had good childhood as you know I did not . I feel better knowing other people did enjoy being a child.

I would ask my parents why didn't they send me to the school for deaf and hoh students in Boston when they found out I was hoh at 8 yo . Why they could didn't it through their thick heads that something was wrong when I could not hear them calling me for 8 years.
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I wish you didn't have to go through it because of your deafness. It's not fair to you. I know your okay now and lot of loves from your sweet fur kid. But lots of fur kids love you.
 
SilverRoxy said:
:( I am so sorry that this happened to you. You turned out alright today. What do you think contributes to that?
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I had some wonderful neighbors one on each side of our house . They were kind to me and would invite me over to eat with them or watch TV . It was a safe haven for me and I had a teacher that felt bad for me , she tried to give me a haircut after school once. Plus I was very stubborn and would not cry after my dad abused me. I would go off and try to comfort myself . I really soaked in any kindness I could get. My childhood did made me a stronger person and have compassion for anyone person or animal that was being abused. It also made it hard to trust people . If a child can't trust their own parents to protect them it's hard to learn to trust . I would had given my life to protect my child and would for my granddaughter. My mom was a kind person she just was not good at being a protective mother. Thank you for your kind words


@ FF :ty: I have a very wonderful daughter and granddaughter and 2 sisters and we are close . I try not to think of my childhood too much , I blocked a lot of it out of mind . my older sister will remind of some things and it's better to left forgotten .
 
whatdidyousay! said:
I had some wonderful neighbors one on each side of our house . They were kind to me and would invite me over to eat with them or watch TV . It was a safe haven for me and I had a teacher that felt bad for me , she tried to give me a haircut after school once. Plus I was very stubborn and would not cry after my dad abused me. I would go off and try to comfort myself . I really soaked in any kindness I could get. My childhood did made me a stronger person and have compassion for anyone person or animal that was being abused. It also made it hard to trust people . If a child can't trust their own parents to protect them it's hard to learn to trust . I would had given my life to protect my child and would for my granddaughter. My mom was a kind person she just was not good at being a protective mother. Thank you for your kind words


@ FF :ty: I have a very wonderful daughter and granddaughter and 2 sisters and we are close . I try not to think of my childhood too much , I blocked a lot of it out of mind . my older sister will remind of some things and it's better to left forgotten .
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Right you have daughters and granddaughter. I'm glad to know your close to sisters. I do have bad memories with some mean teachers but it didn't affect me in a long run but whoa!
 
Frisky Feline said:
Right you have daughters and granddaughter. I'm glad to know your close to sisters. I do have bad memories with some mean teachers but it didn't affect me in a long run but whoa!
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LOL! I had few teachers that I think got to work on a broomstick . :giggle: I was so use to being bullied by my dad nasty teachers and students could not get to me for long.
 
warneri said:
My daughter was the same way in speech therapy - she really resisted and fought it and I finally got tired of pushing. I never wanted to implant her in the first place and when she finally got kicked out for the 3rd and final time I'd had enough pushing her to be someone she wasn't. If she tries it again later in life, great. If she doesn't, great. Whatever makes her happy and comfortable. :) And yes, as a mum it can be embarassing when a child acts up, but that's their way of telling us something they can't fully express yet. After years of uphill battles I realized my daughter was trying to tell me she was perfectly happy being deaf and using sign language with little to no interest in hearing devices, and that's perfectly okay. :)
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On the Bold statement, This is exactly what I had when I was a child. I was born deaf and never knew what sound was like. I grew up never to learn how to read and write until I was almost 9 years old. When I finally was diagnosed that I have deafness instead of Autism (misdiagnosed) at 8 1/2 years old, I wore my first hearing aid (only on left ear) and total deafness (right ear). But then I was forced to go into the mainstream schools instead of the Deaf school. When you mentioned if I love my parents. Well, no, not that kind of love for my parents who don't understand and not willing to learn ASL. I don't remember using home sign language to communicate with my parents. But I do remember my grandfather who loved toys and can communicated with me by gesturing or miming to communicated with me. I love my grandfather for the effort to communicated with home signs.

I really don't like mainstream schools at all. I dreaded that. I wanted to go to the Deaf school so that I can get good grades and communicate with other Deaf students for social. But my parents don't fight for me to get my accommodations for me. I had to go with oral-only method in both elementary and high schools. I struggled and suffered on this.

I just hope you are able to understand your daughter's frustrations and unhappiness not getting the kind of accommodations for the Deaf. You are doing good that you can communicate with your daughter in ASL. That is wonderful. I wish my parents would be like that so that I can loved my parents for understanding my needs. Just pay attention to our daughter's needs. Simple. Don't force her to do something she is not happy with. :wave:
 
Bebonang said:
On the Bold statement, This is exactly what I had when I was a child. I was born deaf and never knew what sound was like. I grew up never to learn how to read and write until I was almost 9 years old. When I finally was diagnosed that I have deafness instead of Autism (misdiagnosed) at 8 1/2 years old, I wore my first hearing aid (only on left ear) and total deafness (right ear). But then I was forced to go into the mainstream schools instead of the Deaf school. When you mentioned if I love my parents. Well, no, not that kind of love for my parents who don't understand and not willing to learn ASL. I don't remember using home sign language to communicate with my parents. But I do remember my grandfather who loved toys and can communicated with me by gesturing or miming to communicated with me. I love my grandfather for the effort to communicated with home signs.

I really don't like mainstream schools at all. I dreaded that. I wanted to go to the Deaf school so that I can get good grades and communicate with other Deaf students for social. But my parents don't fight for me to get my accommodations for me. I had to go with oral-only method in both elementary and high schools. I struggled and suffered on this.

I just hope you are able to understand your daughter's frustrations and unhappiness not getting the kind of accommodations for the Deaf. You are doing good that you can communicate with your daughter in ASL. That is wonderful. I wish my parents would be like that so that I can loved my parents for understanding my needs. Just pay attention to our daughter's needs. Simple. Don't force her to do something she is not happy with. :wave:
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Thank you for both the encouragement with my daughter, and for sharing your experiences. This is a great amount of detail about your feelings, and that's really what I'm looking for.

For me personally, I'm one of those mums who can't find it in myself to push my kids to be anything other than their sweet selves. I was my mom's only daughter and there was always a lot of pressure on me to be like her without a lot of clear definition about what or who she was. Long story short, I got pregnant at 16 trying to make her proud and decided the very first time I held my daughter in my arms that I was going to be different, and my daughter was going to be loved for who and what she was, whatever that may be. I never wanted to pressure her to be like me, and I never imagined how different we could be. But it always made sense to me that the parent should adapt to accomodate the child. I always had to make the effort with my biological dad growing up, and it hurt me as a kid that he never tried to be involved or participate in my life other than his routine scheduled visitations. I think both of these experiences came together to help develop my maternal mentality of loving and adapting for the child, and I am thankful for it, even if the forging process was difficult and painful. Once you can look at life this way, it's like an unneccesary burden gets lifted.
 
Hey, y'all. I just wanted to thank everyone again for your contributions. I've been going through and picking quotes from everyone's sharing to go into this project. I will post the final project here when it's done, and I begin photographing the children tomorrow. The art stage will take a bit of time, and in that time please feel free to contribute more thoughts or feelings, especially if you have not done so yet. My aim is to use this project to spread some awareness to the hearing community about how important it is to learn sign language and be supportive to their deaf and hoh children. If even one parent's eyes are opened to their child's needs then we have done something worthwhile, I think, but I believe we can open many parents eyes! :)
 
This is a letter that my mom wrote to her friend I think around August of 1994.

"We took her in for an audiologist test (hearing test). The results were not that great. I guess she has a moderate hearing loss in her left ear and a moderate severe hearing loss in her right.

She can't hear high frequency sounds like words with sh,k, ch, t and a few others I can't remember. She would only hear half the words. They said they would not have normally diagnosed this until she was 4. But they caught it early.

The audiologist figures the problem is in her middle ear that the hair cells that pick up the sounds are broken. So it is a permanent thing. So she is going to need a hearing aid for both ears. She has got some hearing but they won't know until she's 2.They figure she will need speech therapy to learn how to talk because of this.

At least that is all that is wrong with her and she'll still be able to hear with hearing aids. Things could have been alot worse."

Side Note: I was born at 24 weeks gestation and thankfully my hearing loss was all I had as an problem.

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Until I was three or four, I was pretty much mute, I didn't really talk at all. I remember trying to communicate with my mom through my own "language" of sounds like noises and grunts. And I would often become frustrated when I wasn't being "understood".

When my mom began to teach me sign language, it started to break down that communication barrier between my mom and I. It was slow at first, I still went through frustrations like me signing "more" and I didn't know what the word for milk was so all I did was sign "more". And my mom had no idea what I wanted more of.

So it did take time, but thanks to my mom and dad, I was able to communicate through sign and started to talk at some point.

And I remember loving to communicate with her through sign, especially signing the alphabet then the "Now I know my ABC's" song. I kept asking if we could sign it again haha.

The one thing I would say to my mom and to my dad is "Thank you for always being patient with me".

I can imagine it can be hard for new mothers (my mom had me when my sister was only a year and a half old), to have to go through a process like this, and having to learn a whole different language.

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And today, I don't use sign language so much anymore. Biggest reason would have to be the schools. I never got a translator again after mine left halfway in the year in grade 5 as they claim they were never able to find one ever since.

However I'm still happy being oral today, as I learned to not just rely on sign language all the time, instead I rely more on lip-reading. I still love using sign language though, as it's still useful when I talk to my deaf friends in a noisy area.

So personally in my opinion for HOH/deaf kids with hearing aids/C.I's, if for some reason the battery goes out, and if you are with your mom/dad/friend etc. when it happens, sign language can always be there for you as a back-up - oral or not. Especially for swimming as well.

For example, my dad doesn't know a whole ton of sign, but if we are leaving, he'll say "we are" (which I lip-read that), then signs "going" and I just nod my head to indicate I understand. So it's still useful I find. :)
 
@Hockey94. The word for translator is Interpreter like ASL interpreter or Sign Language interpreter.

I never like the word translator. **sigh** :(
 
Bottesini said:
Think of caz age. Think of the topic.

What would you say to your parent...

Wild times in the forties. :lol:
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Thanks, Botti, I get it now. I thought she was answering a quote and I couldn't find any reference to what she said. I should have looked at the topic.

Knd of sad that Caz's mom blamed Caz.
 
he was stationed Mildenhall Suffolk..it complicated he met her after ww2,little detail he was married with two kids back in Washington who I since met stayed with a total of six weeks as they have me..the brother naughty boy sister ok they found me...I was only vagly aware of half sibs to me he just sperm carrier. my dad was my dad
 
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