Don’t Let Your Children Be At Risk

As an undergraduate Deaf Studies major and candidate for the Deaf Education graduate program, I am very interested in language development and factors that help or hinder language development. My original interest in American Sign Language (ASL) stemmed from the desire to have a closer relationship with my aunt, who was born deaf. Nobody in my family signed and I noticed the lack of communication that we had with her. After enrolling in the deaf studies program and applying the education I was getting to my experiences back home, I soon realized that a huge factor of my aunt’s education and life skills delay most likely stemmed from the lack of language access that she had growing up. For most of her life, she grew up orally and mainstreamed in public schools. It was not until she was a teenager that she started to learn ASL and gain a sense of deafhood through making deaf friends. Even afterwards, she continued to struggle in school and never gained an ability to be independent.

Without a strong language model, it makes learning any school topic very difficult and frustrating. Many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are at risk of experiencing language deprivation due to school systems and a lack of access. This deprivation affects everything including their ability to communicate, understand reasoning and the surrounding world. It also makes it difficult to gain education in other fields (Spaepen, et. al, 2011).

Knowing that over 90% of deaf children are born to hearing

adults, many of whom do not know sign language, it has become evident that these children can be at risk of language deprivation. During my time interning at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, I met a very distraught hearing mother of a deaf student who was struggling in school and at home. She did not sign and was at a loss as to how to help her son. All of boy’s teachers told Mom that there were three essential things she could do:

1. Learn ASL: learn to sign and provide successful communication at home. Being able to ask questions and interact with the world leads children to success. Without a strong language model, children are unable to absorb and retain any incoming information.

2. Raise your child knowing (s)he has great potential: Oftentimes, when a hearing parent has a deaf baby, (s)he is the first deaf person they have ever met. Being deaf does not make them disabled so do not raise them as if they are less than.

3. Stop trying to fix your child: Hearing parents of deaf children often think that there is something wrong with their child. Stop trying to fix what does not need fixing and focus on raising him with complete access to the world… starting with ASL.

Reference

Spaepen, E., Coppola, M., Spelke, E., Carey, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Number without a language model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(8), 3163-3168.