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| Language Development | ||
She is learning that she is able to communicate her needs and she's doing it. She's excited about it. She's imitating and she's asking in books. She's pointing at pictures and looking up at me expecting a response. She knows that every picture has a gesture associated with it. She didn't know that four months ago. The leaps she has made! I wanted to read to her and it broke my heart. I love books and I couldn't read to my kid when I brought her home. I figured out where to buy these little baby board books that have the sign and the English and the photographs. All of that is challenging because most parents can just go to bookstore and buy their kid books. You have to think all the time about what you're doing. The hardest thing is communicating with her. We're trying to learn. We've had people come in to teach us, but it doesn't come easy. As a hearing parent, I had to learn how to share books with her in the language she was using, which was ASL. So I've gone to a Shared Reading Program which teaches hearing parents how to read to their deaf children. They give you books on tape, and I watch the tapes to practice. I read her other books. I have enough basic sign vocabulary that we can do a lot of labeling. We can do some verbs. If it's a whole page of text, I'm in trouble. We sign at home. But when I say sign, it's an insult to American Sign Language (laughter). There's ASL, there's pidgin, there's English, and then there's our family's version of sign (laughter). But we get our point across, that's all that matters.
Spoken English and Sign Language Before he got the cochlear implant we used sign language. Once he got the cochlear implant we focused a lot more on spoken English however we continued the sign language. We also took him to some programs that did a combination of sign language and spoken English. The focus was more on spoken English. We still sign with him now when he has it off at bedtime or in the bath. He occasionally signs back but usually he talks back.
Early on we signed with him exclusively for the first year before we had him implanted because he was not able to perceive sound. Subsequent to that he could perceive sound and because he lived in a hearing household meant that he was going to be exposed to sound all the time. We continued his “deaf education”, his sign language based education, as well. He was on parallel tracks both in an oral program and a signing program until he was three years old.
Strictly ASL. He does take that communication course at his school though. It is communication-like, with the language therapist gives you the word or phrase and teaches you sound, at least to….he had his hearing aids on at that time. He doesn't use his voice for much, he doesn't, but he takes the class. He's been taking it for ten years.
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