the-real-seebs: bamboothief: l0kasenna: officialnatasharomanoff: slecnaztemnot: nmscares: #DidYouKno
the-real-seebs:bamboothief:l0kasenna:officialnatasharomanoff:slecnaztemnot:nmscares:#DidYouKnow #Deaf #DeafAwareness #education #SignLanguage #advocacy #NMSCaresThis is actually sadly relevant. I had a lecture this summer about sign languages and Deaf culture and when I was finished, one hearing girl from the audience stayed behind to ask me some more question.She asked me: “And your parents use sign language, right?” Like it was the most obvious thing in the world and why is she even asking this, of course my parents must know sign language.“No… They don’t, actually.”“And how do you communicate, then?”“Talking?”“But… isn’t that complicated for you?”“It is, sometimes.”“They probably didn’t have time for it…” she said. And I haven’t the heart to tell her that my father was offered sign language courses several times, that I offered to teach them some signs and that they always refused.But I did told her: “It is not that rare. Most of deaf people I know have hearing parents who don’t sign.”It’s the sad truth. People are willing to pay for surgeries to “repair” their children, but they are not willing to learn something to communicate with them.i’d like to add onto this with my own personal experience, too. i was born hearing, but as soon as i was diagnosed as HoH, my parents didn’t do anything to learn ASL. they were quick to put me in classes, but they wouldn’t when i suggested to them that they take the classes with me so that we could learn.i’ve tried to teach my mom how to sign numerous times, but she always says that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” to which i tell her that she can learn, she just doesn’t want to. which is true. neither of my parents want to learn how to sign, but they want me to be able to hear perfectly so they don’t have to repeat themselves.little do they know that their frustration with me not being able to hear them would be solved if they would just learn how to sign. maybe signing something to me once instead of repeating themselves four times and then getting mad would be more beneficial.I’m absolutely shocked at this, it’s never crossed my mind that many parents wouldn’t even try to meet their hard of hearing kids halfway.A day care that I was at for a short time for Uni used to teach kids from about 12 months sign language as a sort of second language (kids sometimes don’t feel like talking or need a way of communicating with other children who are hearing impaired) and I don’t think i once saw parents use it. It wasn’t even hard words or actions it was things like ‘drink’, ‘toilet’, ‘finished’What really confuses me about this:Some of my friends learned a little sign language, and taught it to their kids, even though all of them hear normally, because really young (pre-verbal) kids can learn to use signs before they can make coherent noises, and pre-verbal kids who can communicate things like “not hungry” or “hungry” or whatever else are much happier and throw fewer tantrums.And it’s not really exactly parallel, but it seems to me that this is a much less compelling reason to put in the effort, and yet, they took it for granted that they should do that because of course. -- source link
#disability rights#ableism