The answer to the bolded is "No." You are misunderstanding Bebonang's position on education. I have discussed this issue with her at length and know what she believes.
Again, you are discounting the experiences of the deaf in favor of what the hearing want to believe. The very definition of audist.
No, I take my deaf daughter's experiences very seriously. Her needs and opportunities are paramount in my thoughts and actions. I take the advice of smart, experienced, thoughtful deaf men and women daily. I do, however, discount the bitter, dried-up, self-justifying accounts that Bebonang and you share on this forum, because 1. you have no intention of engaging or interacting in a positive or productive way with anyone who deviates from the path you took long, long ago and are intent only upon validating and 2. you don't know or understand my daughter or her deafness and yet insist upon pushing your baggage and Deaf dogma upon her without listening, without making any attempt to comprehend her unique environment and situation (which you discount), and with prejudice up to your eyeballs.
Bebonang's continued tirades about me being "oral-only" and pushing for "oral-only" are tiresome and offensive and I just don't feel like letting then stand today. My daughter is in and has been in a bi-bi school for the deaf where ASL is the language of instruction for 2 years, prior to that was in an ASL child care environment for the language immersion (instead of near me at a care center provided by my work) and had 3X weekly language therapy -- in ASL -- as part of her early intervention program from the time she was 1 year and 2 weeks old (just 2 weeks after we brought her home from China). It's ridiculous, yet I feel the need to outline these choices in every other post I make, and even still the accusations of "oral-only" persist.
ASL, yes! And she has CIs, too! And
they WORK! Bebonang can't compute this and still simplifies the situation down to a truly stupid battle of ASL v. Oral. Others have insisted that valuing (or should I say "forcing my daughter to use") both ASL and spoken language means I want to sterilize my daughter. These are truly nasty, ugly people whose bitterness must just crawl through them like worms.
Exposing her to both languages takes effort and intervention both on her part and ours -- and more of both goes to providing ASL than to providing spoken language, which she also picks up incidentally and peripherally. Effort doesn't make either of these choices wrong or harmful or unnatural. I've never leveraged the ease and success with which my daughter communicates in spoken language
against the value of her ability to wield ASL. I've always argued
for as much access to communication as possible. I'm so very happy that she has BOTH. I'm as adamant that she have access to written language, as well. Yes, I want her to communicate using written language, too, and I'll shout it from the rooftops. That doesn't mean I'm denigrating ASL. Similarly, I'm thrilled that she can speak and hear beautifully! That, too, doesn't mean I'm denigrating ASL, but for those bitter and nasty worm-eaten few who take any mention of spoken language as an affront, that mention becomes a challenge you to to insult and offend those of us who value English -- the whole bimodal language -- as well as ASL.
And you need to just stop this. My child's means of communicating is not your battleground. There's nobody on this forum who is anti-ASL, so get over the paranoia and put your efforts towards making ASL instruction and exposure viable in the real world, where there is a serious lack of access to it. The bilingual among us can act as a bridge or conduit, a marketing channel of sorts, but you seem intent on burning those relationships at every turn.
Jillio, your repeated and nonsensical lobbing of the term "audist" at me is ridiculous and petty and doesn't help: your self-doubt is showing. Valuing any particular language or mode of language is not in of itself audism, discriminating against or oppressing a Deaf or HOH person is the definition of audism. It's you -- a hearing person -- who are doing that to my daughter -- a deaf person -- but I'd rather bin the nonsense than toss the accusation right back at you.
I agree. But you are not alone!
