A lot of ADers grew up oral?

Pepsi said:
I grew up oral my mother would not let me learn sign
Click to expand...

That's suck. Most hearing parents are like that listening to doctors and audiologists plus AGBell to ban sign language. :hug:
 
It's interesting to listen your stories... almost all experienced almost the same things in the oralism education and environment. It must be some tough life being alone or one of few students in this kind of school environment.

I suspected many of those most frequent ad posters ought to be oralists... so far it seems like so. Don't care if you were an oralist or still is, really from my pov whatever because I have none against you or them as long those respect deaf/Deaf, HoH and other types.

I really enjoy sharing the conservations in the forum... you all are smart and good people despite how hard you went thru in the past. You all are still :deaf: like I am after all.

I remembered once my mother offered me the choices to attend a hearing school or deaf school when moved back to Indiana. I attended ISD before moving out and moving back at the point so I chose to return back to ISD so I was glad I did. Yet I seldom wondered as what would happen if I didn't... I could only guess, but your stories indeed gave me a general idea what it would be like.

Since few others said before that they believe that the mainstream school education system needs some serious overhaul which surprised me little bit. hmm But after reading this thread and other related threads, I could understand more what it's like there (etc) so I do agree more. The same it does for most deaf school systems, too! (ed)

I think you some should get involved with some voice to help the future deaf kids' education system to share your experiences so those current/future hearing parents of deaf babies/toddlers would understand and make their better decision what to do for their kids. Those posts are an excellent ones!

At least you (most) could sign and get involved with the deaf community so that's great after all. Hope more of others will follow up... Just think if the Internet technology doesn't exist yet - ouch! It's high time to do something better for the deaf whether be it oral, deaf, hoh, etc.
 
I grew up oral. At first my parents was gonna to learn sign language, when they found out that I'm deaf. But they did changed their mind due to that they weren't patience to learn sign language.

So I learned sign language later on my life when I was in high school. My parents did let me to learn sign language.

So today I can speak and using sign language. So I only use my voice around my hearing family and use sign language around deaf friends etc.
 
Matilda said:
Yes, my hubby and I have been raised in the oral tradition and we wished we had the best of both worlds of oral and sign, as we are still "fence-sitters". Our parents had negative feelings about sign-language hence our oral education. We experienced low self-esteem and social isolation during our educational years.
Click to expand...

You said it all and sometimes make one wonder why we never had the chance to experience both worlds but I can only say am thanksful that children today have a better opportunity to have access to both world.

Sometimes still feel like a fence sitter at times but im proud to say I can do both signing and speaking so when i am with hearing friends i used my voice but when around deaf people I use my sign or bit of both.
 
Sasha64 said:
Sometimes still feel like a fence sitter at times but im proud to say I can do both signing and speaking so when i am with hearing friends i used my voice but when around deaf people I use my sign or bit of both.
Click to expand...

Lucky you! :)
 
when i was 4 yrs old and got a lot learning of Finger-alphabet and sign. actually between time we all learned with a voice, like Mama or Papa or Oma or Ball etc.
Now i used both of oral and sign, because i do need to communicate with my boss. I don't want use a lot of papers and pen. It would waste time for our business.
 
Byrdie714 said:
<-- Both.
Click to expand...

As many know about my background--it wasn't easy.

We moved from country to country due to my parents missionary work. So whenever we moved to a new country--we learned to speak their language. In our house, if one was in the living room--you signed ASL, if you were in the dining room--you spoke English. If you were in the kitchen--you spoke the language of the country you are currently in.

It was fun at first but as we got older, it got old fast as we were starting to get confused! :lol:

Plus I would stay and live in the living room and make everyone come to me to sign ASL! :lol:
 
I grew up oral, and a lot of people had stated that I speak/lip read very well, so that's something I have to be thankful for being in an oral education; it wasn't easy, it comes with a lot of patiences and practices. ;)
 
I grew up oral and never been to a deaf school. I knew the alphabets when i was little. When i got to high school, I learned to sign more but was still very much oral. I decided I wanted to try going to Gallaudet and I went. Boy, that was some crazy experience for me. While I was there, I got really depressed because I wished I had learned ASL back when I was in grade school. While I was in Gally, everyone kept saying I didn't belong there that I belong in the hearing world. I would tell them that I was very motivated and eager to learn their language but sadly, they just kept pushing me away. Then a friend came up to me and said he would help me. He showed me all kinds of signs and what that means, etc. Thanks to him. I come home at the end of the semester as a changed person. I've learned at that point, I'm deaf and I should be where I should be.

to this day, I'm very much into the deaf world, I sign asl and pse. I work, I use my voice. I have deaf clients coming in requesting me to come into the exam room with a doctor. that felt pretty good too. even the front desk would ask a client if they'd like a deaf worker to interpret. However, it is very frustrated not being able to hear when you can talk. That's where people take advantage of the orals and not understanding that I can't hear.

there are times.. when they ask me how can I talk when I can't hear at all. I have to explain over and over that I had speech therapy thru out much of my life. well, now i don't do it anymore.

I have nothing against oral, asl, pse, see or cue speech.. I think we just all grew up differently depending on how our parents raised us. we can't be blamed for who we are.
 
I'm one who grew up oral, but wished I had the benefit of both oral and sign. I didn't start to learn (tactile) sign until my mid 20's. I was told by my sign language instructor that once I learned sign and began working with a tactile interpreter, I flourished. My self-confidence improved as well because for once in my life I didn't have to struggle to hear what others were saying. Thanks to having oral and sign, I could communicate with others through either modality without sacrificing one for the other.
 
Hear Again said:
I'm one who grew up oral, but wished I had the benefit of both oral and sign. I didn't start to learn (tactile) sign until my mid 20's. I was told by my sign language instructor that once I learned sign and began working with a tactile interpreter, I flourished. My self-confidence improved as well because for once in my life I didn't have to struggle to hear what others were saying. Thanks to having oral and sign, I could communicate with others through either modality without sacrificing one for the other.
Click to expand...

That's interesting since you are totally blind as well. Since I lost my sight I've had problem remembering the little signs that I knew. I am not a very sociable person which made signing harder as I couldn't very well just talk to myself. I did try to learn signs a few times though when I was low vision just to be told my sight wasn't good enough to pick it up but nobody offered to teach me more tactile sign language. Although I've used it before but since their were signs I didn't know people kept giving up and returning to using the Deafblind manual.
 
dreama said:
That's interesting since you are totally blind as well. Since I lost my sight I've had problem remembering the little signs that I knew. I am not a very sociable person which made signing harder as I couldn't very well just talk to myself. I did try to learn signs a few times though when I was low vision just to be told my sight wasn't good enough to pick it up but nobody offered to teach me more tactile sign language. Although I've used it before but since their were signs I didn't know people kept giving up and returning to using the Deafblind manual.
Click to expand...

That's too bad that so many gave up on you dreama. Learning tactile sign really wasn't difficult for me at all as long as I was able to write down notes (related to sign formation, etc.) in Braille. What I also find interesting about my case is that in high school we had a Deaf student (she was the only Deaf student in the school and I was the only blind student in the school), but no one thought to teach me even fingerspelling despite the fact that my teachers and other staff knew about the extent and progressive nature of my hearing loss. It wasn't until I attended my local deafblind center for training that I began to learn tactile sign.
 
I grew up mostly oral but I learnt auslan from my peers while I was a full term boarder at a Deaf (residential) school. When I was 4 1/2yrs old, I goes to a special class for the hard of hearing children to learn to speak. During that time, sign language was forbidden in the classroom. I am one of a lucky few HOH boarders at the deaf school to pick up auslan from the other Deaf boarders. The other HOH children in my class goes home each day and never got to learn auslan. They learnt later as they got older.
Then when I was 11yrs old, my parents sent me to the hearing school in a country town so I can be home each day to be with them. That was the most terrible time of my life as I was placed in isolation from my deaf friends and I suffers badly in education. I was the only deaf person in that hearing school without interpreter as they were unheard of during my time. By the time I left school at 15, my auslan gotten rusty and I have forgotten some signs.
Once I found a job and move back to the city, I waste no time to get back to the deaf community again to get back my auslan. Now I use auslan when I am with the deaf people and I use oral when I am with my hearing family, my hearing husband and to communicate with staffs at work.
 
I grew up oral as well, but I was born deaf in one ear and HOH in the other. I really wished I had learned sign when I was younger, it would have made things so much easier. No screaming matches, no tempers, no hurt feelings, and lost emotions.
 
Grew up oral and started learning ASL when I was 11. Have been using ASL and oral since. My job requires me to use oral because there's no other deaf people on my shift or in my department.
 
When I become deaf at 3 years old and I started sign language. At 15 years old, I started learning to oral. Now my speech is normal like hearing (i still have deaf accent).

Now, I have 8 different languages (6 different sign languages and 2 different speech languages. :-D
 
I guess. I wouldn't consider me ADer since I am new to alldeaf.com but yeah, I grew up orally but learned sign language at same time. I took speech therapy for the first 8 years prior to entering school.
 
I'm glad that I started out orally. It got me used to the hearing world before I was exposed to the deaf world. Sadly, it's disappointing how some deaf people refuse to accept me as a deaf person because I'm not "deaf enough". :roll:
 
VamPyroX said:
I'm glad that I started out orally. It got me used to the hearing world before I was exposed to the deaf world. Sadly, it's disappointing how some deaf people refuse to accept me as a deaf person because I'm not "deaf enough". :roll:
Click to expand...

I had that problem at the deaf school I went to.

Apparently, there were only like three metalheads in the history of that school. I spiked my hair, dressed differently and got ridiculed for it. It was fun though.
 
Back
Top