Deaf Children

Chapter 2 delves into the lives of families with deaf children. It also goes into the genealogy of the Deaf community. It is a common factor that Deaf parents would prefer having a Deaf child, simply because having a hearing child would be more complicated for them. This does not mean that they would love their hearing children any less, The birth of a Deaf baby secures that the legacy of more Deaf children is possible. They are more than happy to celebrate when this kind of news is brought their way.

In chapter 4, it explains how Deaf people live in a hearing world. Some people who have grown up with Deaf people really don't see Deaf people as any different than themselves. Verditz had an idea that sign language comes from spoken languages, English and ASL are similar and different from each other having English as my first language has helped me learn ASL but the sentence structures are very different from English. Sign language is a visual language.

Language is communicated in various ways. Yet, there are still children who are denied the privilege of having one. Only ten percent of deaf children are born to deaf parents. This means around ninety percent are born to hearing parents. Most hearing parents have never been exposed to American Sign Language (ASL), so they do not teach it to their deaf child. One of the main reasons this happens is hearing parents tend to deny their child's deafness (Gray, n.d.). Instead, they choose to have their baby get a cochlear implant (CI). Parental decisions regarding cochlear implantation may be influenced by what they understand it means to be deaf. Basically, they see being deaf as a disability and are more apt to consider

Deaf children are entitled to know that they are heirs to an amazing culture, not a pitiful defect. In order to follow through on that obligation, one of the best things I feel we can do is try to educate other hearing people about the realities of American Sign Language and Deaf culture. Language is one of the most critical aspects of most cultures, and one which sets deafness aside from other defects such as blindness, physical disability, or illness. Sign language is not universal, nor does it always correspond to the spoken language in the same country. For example American Sign Language is native to the United States and Canada. Deaf Canadians might use English, French, or both as a written language. But deaf people in Great Britain, while they may write in English, use a completely different sign language. (nad.org)

The phrase "but you don't look deaf" was the impetus for this research project. The stereotype exists that if you are deaf or have another disability, you are easily distinguished by visual clues that the person is deaf. This research sought to discover if hearing people were correct in this assumption, and you could tell that someone was deaf because of a particular visual clues that would indicate they are deaf. In order to research this idea, I made a survey online using google forms using images of both hearing, hard of hearing and deaf people and asked respondents to choose one of the responses. The findings are being presented with google spreadsheets and google forms.

Development focuses on information processing, conceptual resources, language learning, and other brain development and psychology. A significant amount of research has focused on cognitive development and the deaf community because it is considered the domain for language development. In 1987, Abraham Zwiebel conducted research with three groups of deaf children—a) children from all deaf families that used manual communication, b) deaf children of hearing parents that used partial manual communication, and c) deaf children of hearing parents that used aural/oral communication-- and a group of hearing children. He studied cognitive development using three measures—teacher evaluations, the Draw-a-Person test, and the Snijders-Oomen Non-Verbal Test. The research concluded that manual environment factors are responsible for the higher cognitive development of deaf children of deaf parents (Zwiebel, 1987). Zwiebel’s research holds merit today because of his use of grouping and differentiating within the deaf community along communication

“To the hearing world, the deaf community must seem like a secret society. Indeed, deafness is a culture every bit as distinctive as any an anthropologist might study.” (Walker 1986) Lou Ann Walker’s autobiographical book, “A Loss for Words” details the story of her childhood with two deaf parents. She is the oldest of three children, with two sisters who are named Kay Sue and Jan Lee. All of their names were chosen for ease of lipreading for her parents. As she is the eldest of the three, she begins to act as an interpreter, and does so; often dealing with store keepers, mechanics, and others who would not know American Sign Language, but who would still need to understand what her parents are saying. Lou Ann, as she grows up, realizes

To fully understand why this is a popular debate, we must first explore Deaf culture. Dr. Beth Sonnenstrahl Benedict from the Hands and Voices organization states that “The American Deaf community values American Sign Language as the core of a culturally Deaf identity” (Benedict par 1). Language is a crucial aspect of a culture, and American Sign Language unifies the Deaf community. Although it is often dismissed as a language, ASL has its own unique sentence structure and vocabulary that make it different from English or any other foreign language. Many believe that allowing a deaf child to learn sign language is essential to them embracing their deafness as well as building

The Book I decided to read is called “Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf”. In this book the author Oliver Sacks basically focuses on Deaf history and the community of the deaf developed toward linguistic self-sufficiency. Sacks is a Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He became interested in the problem of how deaf children acquire language after reviewing a book by Harlan Lane. The book was titled “When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf”. This book was first published in 1984 and was published again in 1989. Before reading Harlan’s book Sacks did not know any sign language. The book encouraged him to begin studying sign language. Sacks became extremely interested on how the deaf learn to communicate with the ability of sound being nonexistent. He wanted to know what this process may tell us about the nature of language. Seeing Voices is made up of three chapters, the history of the deaf, a discussion of language and the brain, and an evaluation of the problems behind the student strike that occurred at Gallaudet University, in March of 1988.

In learning about the deaf culture I have taken on a new understanding about the people it includes. Through readings and the lessons, I have learned that being deaf has both its hardships and its blessings. The beauty of the language alone makes one want to learn all that he or she can about it. In this paper I will discuss the beauty of the language and the misconceptions the hearing world has about deafness.

Deaf and hard of hearing people are just like us. They are not any different, but hears like us. There is some common misunderstanding, that is really annoying for Deaf and hard of hearing people. Those misunderstanding are can you understands us? Are you able to drive? Do you need a wheelchair? Can you read and write? Do deaf people have sex? Etc.…These kinds of questions annoyed deaf people the most. People do not realize that deaf people do not have as much as difficulty as normal folks thinks that they have. They can do almost everything and just as much no less. Sometime, they begged to be considered the same as hearing folks. They want to be equals, respected, and value just as much as hearing people. Sometime, we forgot to ask ourselves.

In the article “Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches” the authors talked about children need regularly and meaningfully accessible to human language. Children that have not acquired a language in the early years might never speak fluently in any language. This critical period is for children to develop their first language skills. Most children that are born deaf in the developed countries have cochlear devices implanted, but these devices do not offer accessible language to many deaf children. This device might cause the child to miss the critical period that is needed for children.

I want to state that, foremost, it is not my intent to advocate the teaching of speech and the English language to deaf children, nor is it my intent to advocate teaching a visual language. The decision of language for a deaf child is an extremely complicated and personal one, one that can only be made by the child’s family. This site also has limited space, and therefore does not include several facets of a deaf child’s development. This site is strictly limited to the development of language, whether it be visual or oral, and the controversies and research related to it.

In America, English exists as the standard language. For that reason, it is understood that children will learn this as their primary language. However, according to the “National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders” website, “about two to three children per 1,000 are born deaf or hard of hearing”(Quick Statistics [NIDCD Health Information]) . Moreover, an article by Karen Kalivoda points out that “depending on the age of onset and the severity of the hearing loss, an individual's spoken language development may be radically affected”. Babies learn to speak by parroting the sounds around them; however, a deaf child does not hear these noises and, therefore, the child does not “develop their language” skills

Bauman and Murray (2010) defines Deaf Studies as “interdisciplinary approaches to the exploration of Deaf individuals, communities, and cultures as they have evolved within a larger context of power and ideology” (p. 210). In other words, Deaf Studies refer to a specific academic field that studies deaf individuals and their unique communities and culture and may include constructs from anthropology, linguistics, bilingual education, disability, audiology, etc. Within the context of Deaf Studies, deaf individuals are no longer defined solely by their lack of hearing, but by their cultural, linguistic, and sensorial ways of being in the world (Bauman & Murray, 2010). That is why we hear people educated with Deaf Studies saying ASL kids to refer to deaf kids who use American Sign Language (ASL) system as their mode of communication or see them writing “Deaf” instead of “deaf” to give reference to the universally-recognized culture of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.