which do you choose the hearing world or deaf world?

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serena1986

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i am hard of hearing and i am wondering what is your though?
 
It comes down to what you are conformable in and if you can make a living in your world. If there is not a community where you live that you fit into to can you be truly conformable?

I'm able to do a lot of my work from home. When I’m at home most likely I do not have in my HA or CI. Part of the time when I leave my house I will have in my HA's. If I know I’m going somewhere that I will not need my HA's most likely they will be in a case in my pocket. When I'm going out with a hearing person I would wear my HA's when shopping and going out to eat; the rest of the time I will go out with out them.
 
D as Capital Deaf! I am just being who I am, I am not going to pretending to be a hearing person.
 
I am still a deaf person in either world and I'm comfortable with my identity. That said.. I don't really choose either one. I'm comfortable in both worlds and can get along fine. The Deaf world does have an edge with easier communication. Unfortunately I haven't had the luck to be a part of the community in so long because I moved around so much and right now because I have to watch my money and cannot afford to go out as much (no public transportation where I live.. well there is but it very very limited).
 
serena1986 said:
i am hard of hearing and i am wondering what is your though?
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It's sad you feel you have to make a black and white choice. Why not choose to be with people you enjoy, regardless of their background?

Laura
 
As for me, I chose family, and we are a mix of hearing and deaf.
 
I work in the hearing world but social events are in the Deaf world. So, I guess you can say both.
 
serena1986 said:
i am hard of hearing and i am wondering what is your though?
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You did not add what you want to choose to live in. So my question is what about you on which one is hearing world or deaf world? You should have mention first after the question. That should be fair but what you are doing is not fair.

If you are curious about the question that you want to post, then answer your own question before we can answer your question. :roll:
 
I am on unstable ground also as a HOH I can understand people as well as a hearing sometimes but other times I am profoundly deaf it fluctuates with the balancing issues. But lately it has become a game of reading lips to supplement my hearing.

I started taking ASL when I got the diagnosis I am nowhere near fluent but if I had to choose I would choose the Deaf Community. It is like a small town, everyone knows everyone else and your never forgotten.
 
diehardbiker said:
D as Capital Deaf! I am just being who I am, I am not going to pretending to be a hearing person.
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I did that for the longest time pretending to be hearing. It didn't get me too far anywhere socially. Now mainly, I interact with Deaf and HoH, ASL students
 
I'm hoh and my hearing has been getting slowly worse over the years, but I still have quite a bit of my hearing left and I've never personally known anyone who is Deaf, so it's not really a choice for me. I think even if I lose my hearing completely I will always live in the hearing world because that's what I'm used to. Everyone I know is hearing. I have 2 siblings and a few cousins who are hoh, but we all grew up and live and work in the hearing world. My state doesn't have a school for the deaf, so I'm not sure how large the Deaf community is here. There may very well be a good-sized Deaf community in NH, but if there is I don't know about it.
 
Crickets said:
I'm hoh and my hearing has been getting slowly worse over the years, but I still have quite a bit of my hearing left and I've never personally known anyone who is Deaf, so it's not really a choice for me. I think even if I lose my hearing completely I will always live in the hearing world because that's what I'm used to. Everyone I know is hearing. I have 2 siblings and a few cousins who are hoh, but we all grew up and live and work in the hearing world. My state doesn't have a school for the deaf, so I'm not sure how large the Deaf community is here. There may very well be a good-sized Deaf community in NH, but if there is I don't know about it.
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There is a small Deaf program in Manchester... about 30 kids, and a small Deaf community in NH. There were some NH kids at Austine School in VT (which was on the border of NH) But yeah, it's a SMALL community, since NH is VERY rural. ...It's really sad that you were "defaulted" as so many of us were......You know what I mean? It's like "yeah the hearing world is wonderful and all.....but wouldn't it have been nice to have ADDITIONAL stuff like ASL or socializing with other dhh kids? Even something like going to the Clarke summer program would have been nice. (note not advocating oralism.... simply acknowledging that at least it's specificly for dhh kids)
I think a VERY large part of the problem is that the thinking with bringing up kids with "milder" conditions was that they should just "magically" assimulate into the greater society, and that specialized stuff was not of value...... That's really frustrating. We were NOT given the CHOICE.... And that's really unfair to the KID, as parents don't know what will/won't help their kid if they don't TRY it in the first place! Kids deserve to be exposed to a variety of different methodologies and life experiances. Yes, there's no one size fits all......but on the other hand, exposure to other dhh kids, and seeing if things like ASL and deaf ed might be useful would be AWESOME.... and that's true no matter if a kid is identified early or is a good user of CI/HA........All a kid being a good user of CI/HA means is that they're a good user of CI/HA....It doesn't mean that they will magically assimulate into the mainstream. BTW I just love how pro "assimulate into the mainstream" folks claim that HOH/AVT kids of today assimulate into the mainstream and don't "need" Deaf stuff.......and then in their next breath they say that oral deaf kids have their own culture....Well if oral deaf kids have their own culture then they don't assimulate into the mainstream.....So why not just give dhh kids EVERYTHING? I will NEVER understand that sort of thinking that specialized stuff can't benefit kids with disabilities/differences.
 
Still waiting for Serena's answer to my question.

For me, I would rather be in the Deaf World (Deaf Communities). If the hearing people can sign and not try to make us be like the hearing society, then I would go for that. Only Deaf World, please. :)
 
deafdyke said:
There is a small Deaf program in Manchester... about 30 kids, and a small Deaf community in NH. There were some NH kids at Austine School in VT (which was on the border of NH) But yeah, it's a SMALL community, since NH is VERY rural. ...It's really sad that you were "defaulted" as so many of us were......You know what I mean? It's like "yeah the hearing world is wonderful and all.....but wouldn't it have been nice to have ADDITIONAL stuff like ASL or socializing with other dhh kids? Even something like going to the Clarke summer program would have been nice. (note not advocating oralism.... simply acknowledging that at least it's specificly for dhh kids)
I think a VERY large part of the problem is that the thinking with bringing up kids with "milder" conditions was that they should just "magically" assimulate into the greater society, and that specialized stuff was not of value...... That's really frustrating. We were NOT given the CHOICE.... And that's really unfair to the KID, as parents don't know what will/won't help their kid if they don't TRY it in the first place! Kids deserve to be exposed to a variety of different methodologies and life experiances. Yes, there's no one size fits all......but on the other hand, exposure to other dhh kids, and seeing if things like ASL and deaf ed might be useful would be AWESOME.... and that's true no matter if a kid is identified early or is a good user of CI/HA........All a kid being a good user of CI/HA means is that they're a good user of CI/HA....It doesn't mean that they will magically assimulate into the mainstream. BTW I just love how pro "assimulate into the mainstream" folks claim that HOH/AVT kids of today assimulate into the mainstream and don't "need" Deaf stuff.......and then in their next breath they say that oral deaf kids have their own culture....Well if oral deaf kids have their own culture then they don't assimulate into the mainstream.....So why not just give dhh kids EVERYTHING? I will NEVER understand that sort of thinking that specialized stuff can't benefit kids with disabilities/differences.
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It's good to know that there's a Deaf community in Manchester (even if it's a small one). Thank you for telling me. I live in a rural part of NH that is a little over an hour from Manchester. As I said, there are a few hoh people in my family, but all of us went to the public schools in our towns and none of us knows ASL (although I have a hearing friend who took ASL classes just for fun when she was younger, and she has told me if I ever want to learn she will practice it with me, because she's forgotten a lot of it).

I was mainstreamed into a regular school when I was growing up, and was never given the choice of learning ASL or going to a deaf school, and until I was in my 30s one of my ears still had perfect hearing (my other ear had - and still has - a severe loss), so a hearing aid wasn't even recommended to me until I started losing hearing in my "good" ear and I finally went to an audiologist a year and a half ago and asked about hearing aids because I could no longer hear clearly what people were saying. My audiologist is hoh too, and she was very helpful to me and I'm very happy with my hearing aids.

I'm glad that from what I've read, attitudes of hearing audiologists have apparently changed since I was a child, and these days children with unilateral hearing loss are more likely to be told by audiologists that wearing a hearing aid would be helpful to them. My hearing was tested every few years all through school when I was growing up (someone would come to the school and test all the students' hearing), but never were hearing aids mentioned to me. Fortunately, I did very well in school (I was the valedictorian of my senior class), but it would have been nice to be offered that choice. I'll never know what I missed hearing for all those years because I wasn't wearing hearing aids.

For the record, I'm not angry about being mainstreamed when I was a child. I think that that happened because the hearing doctors/audiologists I saw simply didn't know any better. I think they really believed that wearing a hearing aid or learning ASL wouldn't help me that much because I still had perfect hearing in one ear and was doing so well in school.
 
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