About Parents?

[GrendelQ]

I had not really noticed you saying anything so dismissive of a Deaf perspective before.

I am really kind of shocked.

I guess I am just a little slower than everyone else.

I don't consider dismissing Jillio's approach as flawed as being dismissive of the Deaf perspective. They aren't one and the same.

 

[Babyblue]

It is a completely different situation. Your hearing child does not have the experience of being marginalized. And no one is asking anyone how to raise their child. The point is to ask about and give validity to experience so that you can make decisions regarding raising a child with a realistic perpsective of their experience.

And that "you" is collective, not singular.

But I have a question. If the hearing parents are so disinclined to ask a Deaf person for information, why are they so willing to ask another hearing person for the same information?

Good question. They ask another hearing person that may be experiencing the same.. perhaps both hearing parents have deaf children. Who knows...

I understand what you are saying and I understand what she is saying.

I pretty much see both sides on this, and have seen rudeness from both sides.

Another episode of "Beating a Dead Horse"

I agree... If a person comes on this forum with questions, be prepared for some answers.

 

[Bottesini]

I don't consider dismissing Jillio's approach as flawed as being dismissive of the Deaf perspective. They aren't one and the same.

I thought you were dismissing the value of deaf adults contributing advice to hearing parents of deaf children.

 

[CSign]

You really are egotistical. Everything is not about you. I don't spend a fraction of the time thinking about you that you apparently spend thinking about yourself. Every feminine pronoun is not a substitute for your name.

But are you included in that group? Of course you are. It is obvious that your motive is to support and defend the hearing parents at the price of alienating the deaf. You are the only one that doesn't seem to be able to see that clearly.

Just clarifying. Perhaps you should be a bit more clear in your posts so that there is no confusion. You clearly stated, "her" identifying one individual female, not a group of persons.

 

[Banjo]

Just clarifying. Perhaps you should be a bit more clear in your posts so that there is no confusion. You clearly stated, "her" identifying one individual female, not a group of persons.

Perhaps you should not be so quick to assume.

 

[jillio]

Exactly. Just because your neighbor's teenager shares some important characteristic or cultural connection with your child doesn't mean he or she automatically has a deep wisdom and informed knowledge base about how your child should be raised, educated, communicated with. Jillio's "advice" is deeply flawed and condescending. Putting a mirror to her shows what an absurd approach she is taking.

Again with the intentional distortions.

My advice is not in the least flawed nor condescending. But given that you have yet to figure out how to show respect to the Deaf or their culture, it is not surprising that you would make that error.

Don't like my advice? Don't follow it. No reason to let the study of cultural relativity and participant observer methods and the efficacy they show get in the way of your opinion.

It is truly a shame that everyone is not capable of learning all there is to know in a short 5 years.

 

[jillio]

Just clarifying. Perhaps you should be a bit more clear in your posts so that there is no confusion. You clearly stated, "her" identifying one individual female, not a group of persons.

It was very clear that my reply was referring to someone else who was referenced in the post I was replying to. Maybe if you got out of your own way, you wouldn't have such difficulty understanding the obvious.

 

[deafskeptic]

Only if they would bring back all the cancelled soap opera shows so we wouldn't have to deal with so much drama here at AllDeaf.

I think this forum has been turned itno a soap opera. :P

 

[Jiro]

Exactly. Just because your neighbor's teenager shares some important characteristic or cultural connection with your child doesn't mean he or she automatically has a deep wisdom and informed knowledge base about how your child should be raised, educated, communicated with. Jillio's "advice" is deeply flawed and condescending. Putting a mirror to her shows what an absurd approach she is taking.

but... this isn't about what food to feed or what to use - diaper or cloth. Your baby formula example does not have a cultural, emotional, and social ramification attached to it.

Of course everybody will always have a neighbor with weird suggestion. Using windex for any wound you have. Sleep with a bowl of milk and humanlike-ginger under your bed to get cured from deadly illness. Use your common sense.

What's for sure is that many deaf adults suffer from one common thing. Audism/Oralism. There are many parents who do not even realize it but it's deep inside their subconscious mind that affects their decisions for their deaf children. It's usually why they have a great difficulty in understanding deaf adults' perspectives... which is why they prefer to listen to hearing parents with deaf children. I understand that. I get it. You already have my support because you are already doing ASL with your daughter along with BiBi approach but some part of your thought process still remains flawed.

I am not racist but it's buried deep inside my subconscious mind that affects my decision-making process in choosing which neighborhood to live in. Just something to think about. It's all part of learning process.

 

[Babyblue]

Just clarifying. Perhaps you should be a bit more clear in your posts so that there is no confusion. You clearly stated, "her" identifying one individual female, not a group of persons.

Like Banjo said. You are too quick to assume and is highly defensive when there is nothing to defend.

 

[Jiro]

Just clarifying. Perhaps you should be a bit more clear in your posts so that there is no confusion. You clearly stated, "her" identifying one individual female, not a group of persons.

Why aren't you practicing ASL with your son? My mom spent day and night to learn English so she can communicate with me. Her English is still not at "college level" but she put in time and effort into it with the best of her ability and she wasted no time. You are wasting your precious time.

 

[jillio]

Isn't it just wonderful that 2 people who don't have 15 years experience put together can declare themselves experts on a topic? Two with minimal experience vs an entire forum of people with a life time of experience. Yet they have somehow deluded themselves into believing that they are so superior that they have expertise no one else has been able to achieve.

 

[jillio]

Why aren't you practicing ASL with your son? My mom spent day and night to learn English so she can communicate with me. Her English is still not at "college level" but she put in time and effort into it with the best of her ability and she wasted no time. You are wasting your precious time.

When my kid was in grammar school I certainly didn't have time to sit on an internet forum all day and night touting my own expertise and trying to prove the Deaf wrong. I was busy raising a deaf child and actually gaining experience. Makes me wonder who is raising these kids.

 

[jillio]

but... this isn't about what food to feed or what to use - diaper or cloth. Your baby formula example does not have a cultural, emotional, and social ramification.

Of course everybody will always have a neighbor with weird suggestion. Using windex for any wound you have. Sleep with a bowl of milk and humanlike-ginger under your bed to get cured from deadly illness. Use your common sense.

What's for sure is that many deaf adults suffer from one common thing. Audism/Oralism. There are many parents who do not even realize it but it's deep inside their subconscious mind that affects their decisions for their deaf children. It's usually why they have a great difficulty in understanding deaf adults' perspectives... which is why they prefer to listen to hearing parents with deaf children. I understand that. I get it. You already have my support because you are already doing ASL with your daughter along with BiBi approach but some part of your thought process still remains flawed.

I am not racist but it's buried deep inside my subconscious mind that affects my decision-making process in choosing which neighborhood to live in. Just something to think about. It's all part of learning process.

Exactly. And the comparison mimimizes and insults the Deaf experience.

 

[sallylou]

Note: I generally use alternate gendered pronouns when writing. It has no reference to any particular person. I don't like to always use male pronouns as the "default" and female pronouns as the "other." The best way to eliminate the whole gendered pronoun problem is to make the pronouns plural but that may be awkward in some contexts. I attempt to write as clearly as possible. Assume nothing by the specific pronouns.

 

[rebeccalj]

Of course I have already have made my decision, we were given 2 options 3 months ago and I choose what I thought was best. I never said I'm unwilling to change my mind. I'm not against ASL, actually, before we even found out Natalie had hearing loss we were teaching her very basic signs as an infant (more, apple, thank you) things of that nature.

I've actually called this morning a few places to see if there are any adult classes for me to learn ASL. I am willing to chance our approach if I feel in anyway our approach would hurt her in the long term. I've gotten more than a few NICE PM's about the benefits of signing for all types of hearing loss. I have an IFSP meeting with our service coordinator set up later this week and am going to ask if there are programs available to us to teach her ASL.

So, yes, I am willing to do whatever it is to help her. Just before this forum I thought the best thing to help her was audit-verb therapy. Now, I'm not quite sure.

I still don't appreciate all the rude comments like saying I'm a snake (venom), saying "with a parent like me, she'll need therapy for the rest of her life" and things like that.

I only want the best for her and if that's ASL than bring it on, if it's not (as the audiologist thinks) than we'll go full speed into whatever is. It's harder for me because I am hearign and don't understand what it is to have hearing loss and my child isn't old enought to say "Hey mom, I want to sign."

I don't have the same experience as many of the other posters who have replied with suspicions but, I can tell you, Cheetah's experience is very much like my own.

I won't get into it in too much detail, as I've already posted about it enough for me to get it out of my system, but my first language was ripped from me when my mother tossed me into mainstream school at the age of 5 and she refused to allow ASL in our home any longer. She wanted me to be *normal* whatever that means. :roll: I quickly had to learn how to lip read, moreso than I already did, because that was my new form of communicating with others. I was pretty shy when I was young so it distanced me even more from other little kids my age. All hearies. Unlike Cheetah, I did not come home every day and cry. Instead, I went to our bathroom and annunciated in the mirror to teach myself how to speak properly. My mother telling me to, "Shut up unless you can talk properly," inspired this little obsession to speak *normal*. I still have an accent. Most people think I'm British although I don't know what that is supposed to sound like without a lot of help to hear one.

I can understand that you may have had a change of heart on your approach for Natalie during the last 24 hours. For me, if I learn something new, that makes sense to me, it would be easy for me to re-consider. So, I'll give you that.

I think what touched people off, on the wrong foot?, was that you made it clear from your first posts that you were going oral/auditory with your daughter, even though you expressed the chance that her deafness will progress and, JK, *SO* so many of us have been in Natalie's shoes. We lived in silence because we did not know how to be heard. *Our* first language was denied us. So many, many of us, as adults now, feel very strongly about how wrong that approach is for a deaf child. It's a painful existence being forced to be a hearie when you were born a deafie.

Even if Natalie's loss never progresses to profound deafness what would it hurt you to immerse yourself in the Deaf culture and our language? There's nothing wrong with learning a new culture or a new language. Many of us do it every day due to the countries that we live in. Hearie is the first one we have to learn. Let deafie, Deaf and ASL be yours.

 

[rebeccalj]

But...CUED SPEECH????
That is a bit much, even from you.
Why not ASL?

Because it's not English. :roll:

 

[rebeccalj]

When the service coordinator first met with us, we were given options of therapies. 1) Cued Speech 2) Total communication 3)Auditory-verbal therapy

We choose the 3rd because it seemed like the best choice at the time.

I'm not familiar with total communication?

I think you need to remember that many of these places are, how do you say, motivated by what they can sell you and not how they can help your child communicate in *their* first language.

Audiologist = sell hearing aides or CIs

 

[rebeccalj]

And that mother had such an easy time getting in touch with a deaf person. I find it odd that a parent with a child in EI through Clarke School knows no other parents of deaf children, or anyone else with a hearing loss.

Well, if it's only been 3 months I can imagine the rollercoaster of gathering information while having a toddler around getting into everything. Then again, I'm still pretty naive.

Still, unless there is a privacy policy with Clarke, where they do not give out information, *THE* one thing a parent in her situation would be looking for, I find it crazy that a School wouldn't be the facilitator to seeing that parents, in like situations, could meet somehow for advice and support and information.

But, I have no experience with Deaf Schools so I'm not much help. In an information society you would think that it would be made easy to meet other parents.

 

[rebeccalj]

SEE and CS...the two systems the deaf hate the most. A hearing person promoting the use of these two hated systems with the deaf. Once again, a hearing person thinks they know better what the deaf need than the deaf themselves do.

Wait a minute...what is that practice called? They have a word for it. Anyone know what it is?

Exactly! We aren't five year olds anymore that have to go to bed when we are told. If we can even understand that we are being told to go to bed.

As a Deaf adult nothing drives me more insanely angry than a hearing adult trying to *TELL ME* what will work for a young Rebecca. Bulls##t!! It's patronizing at best and trying to make the Deaf invisible at worst!

I *finally* found my voice in the last 10 years or so and I *WILL* be heard. I'm sure many others feel the same way.