Hello, alldeaf members.
I am a hearing person who works with profoundly deaf people in their workplace. I come in peace, so please do not be offended by the thread title.
I have a background of working with disabled people; however, prior to this job working with various deaf individuals and families, I had never interacted with a deaf person. I naively assumed the people I would be working with would be more or less the same as me, but soon discovered I was wholly unprepared for the reality of how the majority of them live.
Almost all of my clients have an extremely poor grasp of written English and virtually none speak or lipread. I began investigating correlations between deafness and low IQ scores. I found some evidence of this, but most results were that there is no correlation between deafness and a low IQ. I did, however, find out that a growing number of deaf people's first language is sign language! I assumed sign language was a means of communication reserved only for those individuals who are unable to lipread and/or speak.
I cannot fathom why they were not taught English as a primary language during their schooling. As you can imagine, their lack of English skills is a major disadvantage and actually quite dangerous in many ways, as I will outline below.
1. A disproportionate number of my deaf clients and their family are horrifically overweight as a result of dreadful dietary choices. Not once when food shopping with a deaf client has one of them inspected the label of a product for anything other than the price. Unfortunately, most of the poor people I work with are constantly visiting the doctor's office for physical ailments, and most are depressed.
2. A disproportionate number of my deaf clients make bad financial decisions and are in huge amounts of debt.
3. They are sexually promiscuous and do not take adequate precautions before engaging in sexual relations, which is resulting in large deaf families who are unable to communicate at a level required to thrive in the world. I know of several deaf females who are regularly taken advantage of by predatory hearing men. One in particular signed to me that she had been raped twice by a man, and in the same sentence complained about her television not operating properly.
4. The offspring of these deaf couples, who are unable to comprehend English, have even worse communication skills than their parents, and I know of some who are somehow permitted to be homeschooled by their parents. It's really quite troubling.
I was recently made aware of an emergency situation where a deaf child ,who required medical attention, was unable to communicate in English and had to sign what was wrong to his deaf mother. The mother also had no English so had to sign the problem to her mother over facetime. The grandmother also lacked the ability to express the problem in English so had to sign to her husband who thankfully knew some English. The grandfather made a call to the emergency services through a relay service, but because he did not understand basic medical terminology the call lasted over half an hour. Luckily the child was okay.
I fear that there is a growing epidemic in some sections of the deaf community and there is the potential for much tragedy if this appalling oversight is not rectified as soon as possible.
I am a hearing person who works with profoundly deaf people in their workplace. I come in peace, so please do not be offended by the thread title.
I have a background of working with disabled people; however, prior to this job working with various deaf individuals and families, I had never interacted with a deaf person. I naively assumed the people I would be working with would be more or less the same as me, but soon discovered I was wholly unprepared for the reality of how the majority of them live.
Almost all of my clients have an extremely poor grasp of written English and virtually none speak or lipread. I began investigating correlations between deafness and low IQ scores. I found some evidence of this, but most results were that there is no correlation between deafness and a low IQ. I did, however, find out that a growing number of deaf people's first language is sign language! I assumed sign language was a means of communication reserved only for those individuals who are unable to lipread and/or speak.
I cannot fathom why they were not taught English as a primary language during their schooling. As you can imagine, their lack of English skills is a major disadvantage and actually quite dangerous in many ways, as I will outline below.
1. A disproportionate number of my deaf clients and their family are horrifically overweight as a result of dreadful dietary choices. Not once when food shopping with a deaf client has one of them inspected the label of a product for anything other than the price. Unfortunately, most of the poor people I work with are constantly visiting the doctor's office for physical ailments, and most are depressed.
2. A disproportionate number of my deaf clients make bad financial decisions and are in huge amounts of debt.
3. They are sexually promiscuous and do not take adequate precautions before engaging in sexual relations, which is resulting in large deaf families who are unable to communicate at a level required to thrive in the world. I know of several deaf females who are regularly taken advantage of by predatory hearing men. One in particular signed to me that she had been raped twice by a man, and in the same sentence complained about her television not operating properly.
4. The offspring of these deaf couples, who are unable to comprehend English, have even worse communication skills than their parents, and I know of some who are somehow permitted to be homeschooled by their parents. It's really quite troubling.
I was recently made aware of an emergency situation where a deaf child ,who required medical attention, was unable to communicate in English and had to sign what was wrong to his deaf mother. The mother also had no English so had to sign the problem to her mother over facetime. The grandmother also lacked the ability to express the problem in English so had to sign to her husband who thankfully knew some English. The grandfather made a call to the emergency services through a relay service, but because he did not understand basic medical terminology the call lasted over half an hour. Luckily the child was okay.
I fear that there is a growing epidemic in some sections of the deaf community and there is the potential for much tragedy if this appalling oversight is not rectified as soon as possible.
