Im new and a mother of 2 beautiful children who are deaf

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augocthin

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HI,

My name is Rosa, I live in California and like I mentioned I have 2 children who are deaf. I joined this forum because I'm trying to teach my children ASL and I need advice on how I can do that. Here where we live it's an only SEE program and oral. Both of my children have choclear implants , but oral is not our priority for them. I took a beginners ASL in college but thats all they offer here because of the "budget". For my daughter who's 7 is hard for her to make the change to ASL because all her life all she has learned is SEE. We have met a few deaf people and we have learned more but , I guess what I'm saying is that since im trying to only use the ASL i know here at home, in school they keep using SEE and they correct her whenever she uses an ASL sign. Sometimes I wished I had searched for more information when my children were smaller, I feel we were pressured and pushed around by many doctors who wanted us to do what they wanted and we were sort of lost and with no experience or knowledge of the Deaf Culture, but now I just want them to be part of it. I appreciate your guy's time in reading this and I'm thankful for any advice. Thanks
 
Welcome to the community Rosa :) I'm sure you'll find plenty of likewise wonderful parents with lots of help, experience, and insight to offer. Enjoy looking around, and have a pleasant day :)
 
Welcome Rosa! I can't speak to the transfer of vocabulary and knowledge from SEE to ASL, though I'm sure someone else can chime in on how you can leverage that knowledge. But, in our situation, I do think that the strongest factor in developing my now 6YO daughter's fluency in ASL was immersion in the language provided by attending a bi-bi school for the deaf from the time she was 1: first with me at her side via 3X weekly early intervention sessions with an ASL playgroup + 1 on 1 communication instruction with an SLP (using ASL), plus attending an ASL-based daycare during school hours, and then on her own from 3YO, as she attended school full-time.

This opportunity made up for my family's initial lack of familiarity with ASL, and slow development of fluency (which even after 5 years of learning, I still don't think is at a sufficiently sophisticated level required to provide my daughter with appropriate language development).

We live out in the boonies, which makes it tough to build a community of ASL users outside school, but we work at making those connections, despite the difficulty, because I think we will always depend on the richness of language that ASL-fluent peers and teachers can give her, I doubt we could ever provide enough language challenge in isolation in our home.

Best of luck as you build your children's language(s).
 
augocthin said:
HI,

My name is Rosa, I live in California and like I mentioned I have 2 children who are deaf. I joined this forum because I'm trying to teach my children ASL and I need advice on how I can do that. Here where we live it's an only SEE program and oral. Both of my children have choclear implants , but oral is not our priority for them. I took a beginners ASL in college but thats all they offer here because of the "budget". For my daughter who's 7 is hard for her to make the change to ASL because all her life all she has learned is SEE. We have met a few deaf people and we have learned more but , I guess what I'm saying is that since im trying to only use the ASL i know here at home, in school they keep using SEE and they correct her whenever she uses an ASL sign. Sometimes I wished I had searched for more information when my children were smaller, I feel we were pressured and pushed around by many doctors who wanted us to do what they wanted and we were sort of lost and with no experience or knowledge of the Deaf Culture, but now I just want them to be part of it. I appreciate your guy's time in reading this and I'm thankful for any advice. Thanks
Click to expand...

What type of placement are your children in?

That is quite unbelievable that the teacher would "correct" the signs that your daughter uses if it's in ASL. Bizarre.

If you want to learn more ASL, you should enroll in an ASL class and/or connect with one of the CSD depending on where you live.
 
augocthin said:
HI,

My name is Rosa, I live in California and like I mentioned I have 2 children who are deaf. I joined this forum because I'm trying to teach my children ASL and I need advice on how I can do that. Here where we live it's an only SEE program and oral. Both of my children have choclear implants , but oral is not our priority for them. I took a beginners ASL in college but thats all they offer here because of the "budget". For my daughter who's 7 is hard for her to make the change to ASL because all her life all she has learned is SEE. We have met a few deaf people and we have learned more but , I guess what I'm saying is that since im trying to only use the ASL i know here at home, in school they keep using SEE and they correct her whenever she uses an ASL sign. Sometimes I wished I had searched for more information when my children were smaller, I feel we were pressured and pushed around by many doctors who wanted us to do what they wanted and we were sort of lost and with no experience or knowledge of the Deaf Culture, but now I just want them to be part of it. I appreciate your guy's time in reading this and I'm thankful for any advice. Thanks
Click to expand...

Oh wow.... tough. They're getting Sign in school, but it's the wrong sign....at least you're trying to give them all kinds of options!!!
I'm guessing they're in a regional program, right? Wish I had some advice....
 
CSign said:
What type of placement are your children in?

That is quite unbelievable that the teacher would "correct" the signs that your daughter uses if it's in ASL. Bizarre.

If you want to learn more ASL, you should enroll in an ASL class and/or connect with one of the CSD depending on where you live.
Click to expand...



Yes they would correct , for example, the sign for CAR in ASL means drive in SEE so they would correct her to the correct sign in SEE for car. I already took the beginners class in College and that's all they offer, but I would look online or something. Thanks for your response.
 
deafdyke said:
Oh wow.... tough. They're getting Sign in school, but it's the wrong sign....at least you're trying to give them all kinds of options!!!
I'm guessing they're in a regional program, right? Wish I had some advice....
Click to expand...



The principal told me that they choose SEE because they believe it helps children better to learn how to read and write. I think it's ok for that part but for daily communication I like ASL. It's hard to use SEE all the time when you're communicating and its also less expressive. I think Asl has more meaning
 
augocthin said:
The principal told me that they choose SEE because they believe it helps children better to learn how to read and write. I think it's ok for that part but for daily communication I like ASL. It's hard to use SEE all the time when you're communicating and its also less expressive. I think Asl has more meaning
Click to expand...

What type of placement are your children in?
 
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