shel90

Botts doesnt have a reputation of overreacting.

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"Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it."

--- Anonymous

Deafness

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Bottesini

Kind of under reacting. But it's enough for me that my family just said they won't frequent it anymore either.

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jillio

And another one that comes in just to minimize another's experience.

jillio

Good for your family. I love to see that kind of support happening in families.

jillio

rebeccalj

And he wants to meet deaf friends.

Frisky Feline

i guess he's very curious about deaf/hoh people that he just finished high school. He is sort of exploring into his life in the world.

i thought it's a good thing for him to realize that we all are the same as everyone except hear. Oh yes there are some 16 or 17 yrs old teen gals who have hearing losses who just joined here on alldeaf.

Frisky Feline

hope he sticks around here after one day experimenting on alldeaf. I thought he has a great and fresh sport. let s see if he does come back.

dogmom

power-over is all connected...racism, sexism, audism, able-ism etc - same same
that's the real issue one must look beneath to see

products of audist, racist, sexist society.

the thought that simply because we in U.S. happen to have an African-American president = racism is less - is itself one of the most racist perceptions

Speedy Hawk

Post 16 education. Finish school at 16 years old and sixth form is for 17 years old want to stay school another year or two then go College or Uni or Work.

sallylou

Wirelessly posted (droid)

In this case, I think it's a matter of youthful optimism. With some education, the young man will come to understand.

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dogmom

yes, in this case I agree there is a preponderance of that
and I do hope he will come be to be awake - but he might not-

sallylou

Wirelessly posted (droid)

We are using teaspoons in a vast ocean. If we can all use our teaspoons, maybe we can make a difference.

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dogmom

true that

Dixie

It nearly killed me to see a 5y/o with bi-lateral CIs the other night. His parents not once used ASL with him and the boy was all oral. I can tell he was struggling even with the CI at the party with other kids. I thought about walking up to him and ask him if he knew signs or not, but I thought, no his parents might think I'm some crazy person so I didn't. But still, I would have liked to have known. I wanted to tell the parents, there's nothing wrong with deafness, there's nothing wrong with ASL. One day he will make the personal choice to be deaf or be a broken hearing version of himself. Once he discovers the deaf community, he will go to be with those who understand him best- Deafies like us.

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Oh, you will. It is all a dream and since matter cannot be created nor destroyed, the dreams must be real in all their myriad forms. -Beowulf
This Delicate Thing God Has Made
The world is measured in peasants; smaller than a unicorn but, bigger than a tidbit!

deafdyke

OMG yes......I wish SO badly that we could get rid of that old myth that HOH (either functionally or audilogically) aren't welcome in ASL circles or Deaf culture. GOD, the world is not a soundbooth. It's difficult functioning as "fake hearing" in difficult listening situtions such as the real world.......whereas with ASL, you can communicate in a crowd of strangers.

Latascha

Wow, it just took me two days to work my way through all 13 pages. I started reading and noticed after a while that one unpleasant memory after another popped up.
I was mainstreamed, I was bullied, I hated it.
I'm not sure what was worse. The teachers, not doing anything, the teachers laughing along with other students, or my so called "friends" humiliating me every single day.
It was hell...
7th to 9th grade were a really dark hour.

I can't finish this right now, my daughter is up, but I hope I can get it off my chest sometime later.

katz4life

Hi, Dixie - oh my gosh.. I am so speechless. To answer your question - well, it's hard to say whether about Deaf students are more likely to be bullied/harrassed by hearing peers in mainstream school than normal hearing peers. I had been through bullyings by hearing peers in middle and high school. I was barely the only Deaf student at my mainstream school although I wasn't. There was about 10 other deafies (almost all of them were hard of hearing students that could speak and hear much much better level than an non-orally Culturally Deaf like me) in my school they were not fully mainstreamed. They went to that special program classroom for "hearing impaired" but I left that stupid program long time ago and I was on my own with private hired-interpreter in full mainstreamed classes as everyone else. There was a several students I knew them have CP (Cerebal Palsy) and I had never seen them being bullied or harrassed. They were chaperoned along with a staff of an assisant or something like that from class to class, I guess...that's because I oftenly seen them passinig in the hallways. There was one Deaf student named Sarah at my school but I assumed that she 'overshadowed' her deafness, she has Deaf Grandmother but i don't know much about her family issue.. I remembered her mentioning me that her hearing parents did not get along with Sarah's grandmother because she is Deaf...? They argued over Sarah, Deafness, and ASL issue and the Deaf grandmother was upset Sarah's parents decided to put her in hearing school and banned her from learning ASL and also banned her from hanging out with Deaf people or friends, and then she grew up orally. I don't know if Sarah ever visits her Deaf grandmother but i am not sure if her grandfather is also Deaf or HOH, I cannot recall. Not sure if they are still alive or not. I had never met her grandparents I wish to meet them and what they were like because they are Deaf. I don't see Sarah's hearing parents as true Christian when they done something awful hurt and disrespect to her own Deaf grandmother. I felt little uncomfortable meeting my friend Sarah's parents..I don't know but I felt something funny but maybe i am wrong...when they first met me at their house i was first nervous... my feeling was mixed...not sure whether if they looked down on me because Sarah did not have Deaf friends at that time except me. that the everyone treated her like she is hearing. I think at that time she was hard of hearing person and now she is profoundly Deaf after high school graduation. It does still disgust me to this day especially you brought this question up making me remember why nobody picked on her, bullied her, harrassed due to that she has deafness in her. She was ranked 13th HS class student and very strong Christian background. She did not really sign at all, we lived in same town and I had never met her until in the middle of our freshman year, I just happened to notice her hearing aid behind her ear almost covered by her hair outside by the hallway door near my Earth Science classroom (we never had same class period except lunch break together in all 4 years at HS) and I tapped on her shoulder, 'hi I didn't know you Deaf' in signing and she didn't know ASL at that time. She knew very few words in signing...I was shocked. Sometime later I meet her during lunch break and tried to start conversation..she started to learn some ASL in order to communicate with me. I know this is off point, to cut the chase to the end of the story, 10 years later we reunited after HS graduation, she is now teacher for the Deaf at Deaf school, expert ASL user, is identifed as Bilingual and Culturally Deaf as well. I asked her how come no one hearing students picked on and bullied her in school life but me? She flatly answered 'no idea why'. I can tell why..that is NO , i repeat NO EXCUSE for hearing peers to treat us any differently because we have the same deafness issue. That is total bullcrap for what they did to me throughout the years and she had none.

Anyhow, well it is very unacceptable what your careless parents said to you and treated you as lowest human being next to the nothing...if your parents were my parents...I would've shoot them in the head.

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~katz4life~

katz4life

I was told by a Deaf Bulgarian friend who was born and raised in Bulgaria, that the Deaf school in Bulgaria where she attended, is not allowed Deaf students to go to college after HS graduation. I was like, WHAT?!!?!

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~katz4life~

katz4life

All I can say, WOW!! I watched the rest of the film...I loved it! Since I know it wasn't aired on U.S. tv. But it is perfect to put that film for World Deaf Cinema and International DeafFilm Fest in Rochester, NY and Los Angeles, CA. At least it helped me learn a bit of BSL whenever I meet a Deafie Brit!!

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~katz4life~

katz4life

Exactly. Ditto that in the bold.

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~katz4life~

katz4life

Uh...umm ok.

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~katz4life~

katz4life

Deleted. Nevermind.

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~katz4life~

katz4life

Hmm, yeah it sounds like two of my friends...one of them told me that if new black tenants move in the apt that my friend owns, he would increase a cost of the rent. =X

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~katz4life~

Cheetah

katz4life

HAhahah...oops, i mean no offense. Asian penises does not bother me...because I had been there and done that. Oh, my TMI. Anyway, I've seen a porn of 3-foot schlong Japanese guy. Yes, TMI again.

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~katz4life~

katz4life

Yes, that was in Jasper, Texas. Another one somewhere in Louisiana a several years back that involved 5 or 6 blacks beating a sole white boy at a school.

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~katz4life~

jillio

It is so amazing how the "deaf experience" contains so many likenesses no matter where or how you were raised. That experience is a constant for deaf kids everywhere. And it is the most difficult thing to get hearing parents to accept. They always have, "My my child will be different!" ready to pop out of their mouths. No, your child is not different. Your child will also have the sameness of the deaf experience, no matter what device they use or don't use. And one day, we will see your child, whom you claimed was going to be oh! so different as a result of technology and your super-human powers as a parent, posting on forum just like this and saying the same things that the d/D adults are saying today.

Here's the thing...a deaf child is going to live the deaf experience, period. Assistive devices don't change that, advances in technnology don't change that, keeping them in an oral environment and a mainstreamed or oral school does not change that. They are deaf and they will have the deaf experience in their lives.

However, it doesn't have to be a horrible experience if you provide for their needs as a deaf child. Addressing a deaf child's needs from a hearing perspective is what creates all of the negative experience deaf adults describe from their childhood. It changes to a positive after they discover Deaf culture, signed language, and a community of their peeers. The whole of the Deaf experience becomes a sense of pride instead of shame, a sense of belonging instead of being excluded, a sense of being whole instead of broken,

Most of the d/Deaf adults on this forum had to wait until they became adults and no longer had to abbide by the decisions their hearing parents made for them to find this positive deaf experience. But it doesn't have to be that way.That is something we can change at any time in any generation. All it takes is to provide for the deaf child's needs as a deaf child. Empower them NOW, not later.

howag

Lol are you sure you weren't watching anime?

Latascha

Yes!

Ok, I'll try to go on with my story. It really feels good to finally talk about it. I was a smart kid, I always wanted to go to university. Therefore I HAD to be mainstreamed. To grasp that I think I have to tell you something about our schoolsystem first.
The first four years it is the same for every child. After that, there are three different type of schools. The "Hauptschule" with another five years of education. After that you can look for a job. Then there is the "Realschule" with six more years of education, with slightly different subjects and a little higher standard. If you go that way you can either get a job afterwards, or transfer to another schoolprogram where you graduate from after another three years. With that you can at least go to a few collages, but your choice is very limited. Then you have the "Gymnasium". You attend from grade five to grade thirteen (for a few years now only until grade twelve). After that you can go to any college, university and study whatever you like. So it always was clear that I would go to such a school, where I'd have as many options as possible for later. Well, for deaf kids there is only ONE school in the whole country which offers this education and that was really far away, plus the reputation of that school is really bad. A no go for my parents, and I agree on that point. (Many people who went there didn't go to collage or just didn't make it, because the teachers were very easy on them, so they graduated without the required knowledge..) In Munich there is another school for deaf kids, but that is one with a two year system after which I could only choose from a very short list to study. Those are the only two schools existing in Germany for deaf kids with the option to go to university afterwards. Oh that one in Munich is not really for deaf kids. They have mixed classes and if you are lucky you are not the only deaf student out of 15. Actually there is a one pure deaf class each year with only a few students, but they have to attend school for one more year, learn everything only a lot slower and it really is stupid, because the teachers don't know any sign language. Maybe they know how to spell their own name, but even that is rare.
With all that in mind, I was mainstreamed and I really am grateful for it, besides the fact that it was hell, but not being allowed to attend college would've been worse. So after four really good years at school where I had a few friends, got along with my teacher I was enrolled in a "Gymnasium" with a good reputation. We were 37 children in one class, I knew no one besides a girl from my old class, who was my "friend" back then but very quickly turned her back on me.
The girls just ignored me most of the time, but the boys were really mean. I told more then one of my teachers, I told my parents, but I got all that crap many of you said already. "Boys will be boys....You have to learn to stand up for yourself...There is nothing wrong with being different. If they do treat you differently, they are not your true friends" It really didn't matter. True friends or no true friends, for a ten year old girl there are other things that matter like not having to eat lunch alone every single day. Not getting picked on everywhere, by older students, even some teachers.
I got older, my parents told me I should stand up for myself, so I did. Yeah, didn't work at all. After I stopped ignoring all those jerks it really got bad for two years. I actually was a good student, but that was over then, too. I started to ditch school which made everything worse actually. I was afraid to go home, because maybe someone had seen me or told my parents that I hadn't been in school. At the same time I got more and more scared of the idea to go back to that place and endure another single day.
I liked math, until one day my teacher laughed at me, because I pronounced something wrong. Along with her, the whole class started to giggle...Same thing happened in french a few times. Well, in french it happened to everybody, that was not that bad, at least I told myself that over and over, until I finally believed it. Geography was bad. The teacher had a full beard and was talking to the blackboard most of the time. When he asked something and I couldn't give him the right answer (he wouldn't repeat himself, I should just pay more attention) he threw pieces of chalk at me. My german teacher told me once in front of the whole class that I should try to make some friends and not shut everyone out...The more I think about it, the more memories pop up in my head. My classmates along with my "friends" loved to hide my things, throw my jacket out into the dirt (there are no lockers in german schools, you just have all your stuff with you the whole time), destroy papers I wrote,etc.
9th grade was different, finally. We were mixed and splitted into new, smaller classes and I somehow got lucky and only had to deal with a handful of jerks on a daily basis. Many of the new kids just ignored me and that was fine with me. I didn't like it, but it was way better, then the years before. Still, I didn't stop the ditching, I just hated that place and escaped as often as possible. My parents were absolutely clueless. I remember one day in 10th grade when my chemistry teacher wanted to talk to me in private. She took me to her lab and said that she was worried, because I had been sick a lot lately and that she was afraid that it would cause separation between me and the other students, that I would lose the connection to the rest of the class and that she didn't want that to happen. It sure felt like a slap in the face. That woman had never noticed anything, or remembered anything for that matter, because she was one of the teachers I had told about my random schoolday. I just smiled, told her that nothing had changed and left. The last two years were worse, again. But at that time I just focused on studying and repeated "It will be better once you get out of here" over and over and over. That's how I made it, I think. I didn't go to prom, I never set a foot into that school anymore.

Yes, I was able to turn all that into experience, it made me the person I am today, but NOBODY should have to go through something like that!
Being a teenager is hard, even as a privileged white male I'd say. To be different is not an easy thing, not when everyone around you tells you that you just have to try harder to fit in. The truth is you NEVER will! Hard thing for me to learn was that it is absolutely okay! In school I stopped wearing my HAs because I was afraid someone could notice and get another reason to make fun of me. If I wore them, I tried to hide them under my hair. Today I just sometimes choose to not wear them, but that is because I'm sick of all that noise.
Sometimes I still wonder who I can blame for all that. For all those years of torture I had to endure. Why wasn't there anybody to hear what I had to say? To believe the things I had to go through? Why didn't anyone help me?? And then I do have to stop myself from thinking: I know why, I just wasn't worth it.
At this point I get angry again. How is it possible, in a society which claims to call itself "tolerant" to have to deal with crap like that?!
Nobody should have to doubt him/herself for who he/she is. It is pretty sad actually.
Yes, all that experience is a reason for me to sometimes not like hearing people, to think all of them are ignorant! I do have to work on that, but it is really hard if I get one example after the other that my statement is totally correct.

There is not one school in Germany for deaf kids where teachers know and use german sign language. The best thing you can find around here is signed german in a few deaf schools. My husband went to a deaf school. There the deaf and HoH kids were separated, even during the break, out of fear the HoH could learn sign language and forget their speech. You know what's really bad? Most deaf kids don't know how to sign very well, but they don't know german very well either. They just don't have a language!!! That is still happening here! We are about twenty years behind the USA. (Ok, I'll stop right here, I'm getting OT)