Originally Posted by jillio

I guess I could have considered myself an informal ASL student when I first began learning. I visited a Deaf club, and deaf socials as a way to interact with other deaf individuals. I suppose my purpose was to learn about the culture and the experience of growing up deaf, but it was learning that takes place in a very informal way, like two neighbors chatting about things. Of course, my ASL skills improved, because of the corrections made during conversation.

I don't recall ever being ignored at one of these events. My introduction usually started with, "Hi, my name is Jill, and I have a deaf son." I let the deaf individual I was introducing myself to take it from there, and once it was established that I was simply there to make friends and to help my son develop ties to the community, I would be introduced to others, and usually end up chatting about all sorts of things. I think two things were key in my ability to be accepted into the community: one, that my son was deaf and my motivation was to help him, and two, that I always let the deaf individual take the lead rather than saying "teach me this, or how do you sign that?" Questions that came up usually arised from just having a conversation, so that the learning came from simply getting to know the individual as a person.