“Help! I just found out my child is deaf. What do I do? I’ve never even met a deaf person. I read that deaf children have low reading levels, and speech is the best option. I’ve heard great things about the Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) Foundation…”
Here’s an unscripted video of me portraying a common deaf experience/storyline, through multiple modalities.
Quick background: I’m deaf, born in the 90s to hearing parents. They were shocked at first, but they adjusted, researched, and chose to learn sign language immediately. I grew up bilingual, fluent in both ASL and English. I’m independent, successful, and most importantly, happy. I’m close to my parents, and we’ve always had deep conversations, thanks to sign language.
When you’re young, you absorb information like a sponge. My mom loves to tell the story of the “Helen Keller” moment when I was two. For 18 months, I had no language. One day, my mom signed “bear,” and I signed it back. From that point, I rapidly learned vocabulary. I was even in gifted classes for English, and the potential damage from my early lack of language was avoided because my parents acted fast and taught me sign language.
Many people make the mistake of focusing solely on getting deaf kids to absorb sound. They forget that deaf children learn best through their vision. By focusing only on sound, the window for learning language closes. This is why learning to sign should be treated like an emergency—it’s vital for your child’s communication. Focusing on speech sounds is not language, but teaching them signs is.
I did wear hearing aids on and off and received speech therapy, but only when I wanted to. It’s essential to offer speech or hearing aids as an option, but sign language should not be treated as a risk to that process. In fact, sign language can help a deaf child learn speech more easily.
Thanks to outdated thinking, the 1880 Milan Conference, and organizations like the AGB Foundation, many parents are wrongly guided to focus only on speech and hearing, vilifying sign language. But hearing devices are just tools. They will never fully replicate hearing. It’s essential to understand that a deaf person’s natural mode of communication is visual. Sign language is not a hindrance—it’s a gateway to language.
Scholars often have a limited perspective, seeing spoken language as the only valid form. But for deaf people, struggling to fit into a world built around sound is exhausting. If more people knew the variety of ways deaf people communicate—through ASL, Pidgin, SimCom, or text—deafness would be viewed differently.
Deaf children who grow up with limited language access face behavioral, emotional, and intellectual challenges—not because they’re deaf, but because they lack language. As my hearing dad says, learning to talk is a survival skill, but it’s not true communication. Sign language is a deaf person’s natural language, and it comes in many forms worldwide.
Deaf people have been contributing to society for decades as intellectuals, inventors, parents, and more. The richness of deaf culture is beyond the public’s understanding—our humor, our ideas, and our ways of life are truly unique. Deaf people are thriving, contributing to society in meaningful ways, and this will only increase with more awareness and acceptance.
The key is to keep believing, keep going, and love your child. It may seem overwhelming, but you can do this. I’ve seen parents from all walks of life—single parents, families with limited education, those living in poverty or remote areas—learn sign language and raise their deaf children with love and respect. Those who put in the effort are rewarded with a close relationship with their child. Those who don’t are not. You’re not alone in this journey.
For those already on this path, who’ve embraced sign language and supported their deaf child—thank you. You are incredible, and we need more people like you.
This video was recorded in one take. It’s raw and from the heart. I hope it resonates.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43QDcPYnL4
Video description:
Transcript/Description: I am a white woman wearing a black t-shirt. The background is a plain white wall. I have my brown hair in a bun. I am expressing this story in multiple modalities – ASL, visual vernacular, and English via the captions. The story is told through different perspectives, the deaf boy’s and the mother’s, and my own This story tells a story of a woman who gave birth to a deaf child. After some suspicions, she takes her child to the doctor to check his hearing. The doctor says “I am so sorry” and “he can’t hear”, and proceeds to make strong recommendations on what is the “right” way to go from there with this new discovery, of her son’s deafness. She follows her doctor’s guidance, to never teach her child sign language and to immediately get a hearing device and learn to speak. They go through a very difficult journey, riddled with conflict, frustration, and confusion. When the boy goes to school, the only deaf kid there with no other access, his life is full of blurs and not knowing, and trying to survive. He has temper tantrums and rebels. He is not happy.. The mother one day decides to look up more information online. She discovers a plethora of information, including information on sign language. She sees videos, articles, and is taken aback by how happy some of the deaf people signing look. They’re easily communicating with one another. Looking up signs online, she quickly learns “Do you want to eat?” and decides to test it out with her son. An apple is used to demonstrate what she is trying to say. Her son is immediately intrigued. His demeanor changes. Immediately, he repeats, “I want” in sign. His mom is shocked that the ability to learn language is so effective and quick when it comes to signs – something she had never once used with him before. She wonders to herself why she did not explore or look this up earlier – and remembers what she was told by her doctor, and she never looked back… Until now. She has the realization that there is no one way – she has had her blinders on all these years, and she had neglected that all around her, outside the narrow path she was on, there was a full, beautiful world of sign language, bilingual communication, deaf pride, and community waiting for her and her deaf son. She decides to look up if there is a deaf school in her state, and there is. The mother and her son go for a visit. The deaf principal introduces them to his potential classmates, a group of lively, confident deaf peers. The boy is amazed by how friendly they are and enjoys the visual stimuli as opposed to people moving their mouths all the time. They decide to enroll him. He has a hard time expressing himself and communicating, but his growth progresses, and with continued support and time, he blossoms into a confident signer who has friends. His writing and reading is delayed, as a result of the lack of language in his critical development window. With no full language in these key years, it becomes more difficult for the brain to learn a language later on in life. But, it’s possible. The boy just needs to keep practicing, and get additional support, but he is happy and doing so much better. When the school year is over and his mom picks him up from the dorm to bring him home, they are both able to have a conversation back and forth through signs – she asks him about his classes, he shares his favorite book series, and their connection with each other is stronger than ever. At the end, I tell the audience – “I’m sorry”? No. We are proud. We are proud to be deaf. Imagine if that boy had stayed in that reality for the rest of his life. He would be a withering flower, as opposed to the blossoming one he is now. If you know someone going through this, or are experiencing it yourself, feeling heartbroken after finding out your child is deaf… It’s okay to feel that way. Feel what you feel. You will adjust. Take a step back. Zoom out. Look at the bigger picture. Is your child a failure? Incapable? No! Turn that “can’t” in a CAN. Deaf people can do anything! This is a beautiful thing. Never stop believing. Keep going. Let’s keep an open mind and heart. You with me?Show less
