Greetings from New Zealand

Daza said:
Yes i speak orally. My left ear as far as i knew growing up was normal. My parents didnt know i had a hearing problem until i was 4. I do have problems pronouncing certain words with silent vowels etc.

I do not know ASL, or NZSL for that matter. I did try to learn NZSL ages ago but found it was very hard to learn.
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Did you have exposure to other dhh kids growing up? What about education? Was it just hearing school? Thought except for van Asche and Kelston Deaf Schools, that deaf ed was very mainstream in NZ....it's also been traditionally oral.... I have heard NZSL is hard to learn...still might be fun to learn it as a second language...maybe it might not be as hard this time.
 
deafdyke said:
Did you have exposure to other dhh kids growing up? What about education? Was it just hearing school? Thought except for van Asche and Kelston Deaf Schools, that deaf ed was very mainstream in NZ....it's also been traditionally oral.... I have heard NZSL is hard to learn...still might be fun to learn it as a second language...maybe it might not be as hard this time.
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No didn't and when growing up because i didn't need hearing aids at that time and i could speak normally and hear speech ok. I mean didn't have anything to compare what normal hearing was. Being completely deaf in my right ear and being able to hear in the left. I blended in. Its almost an invisible disability. It wasn't until i was 20-21 that i got high-frequency loss in my left ear with the tinnitus as well that without a hearing aid i would be almost completely deaf.

I found education hard at times, i didn't go to any special school or anything. I dont think i had the same concentration span as the other students. But i think i did ok. Had my hearing been as bad as it is now, it would be a totally different story. Even with something like uni or polytech now would be too difficult to cope with. But thankfully you have the internet to learn and most online education does have captions.

I recently downloaded on the ipad a NZSL app which has video clips of a sign for a word, however you have to be connected to the net in order to view the videos. I probably will learn it down the track.
 
oh so you had unilateral deafness growing up? Pretty much hearing? Yeah nowadays they're pushing aiding unilateral loss kids and monitoring them....used to be all you got was NOTHING!
 
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