This cartoon captures "The Greatest Irony" of teaching hearing babies sign language while forbidding deaf babies from learning sign language, thus depriving deaf babies from being exposed to language for a long time.  It is NOT easy to say words accurately by speech, creating more frustration for deaf babies!    

(This is what I wrote earlier in my other blog, and I thought it is fitting for this one, so I copied and pasted it here) I always felt that it is a form of child abuse or neglect because it really denies the young children from understanding much while growing up. They force the deaf/hard of hearing children to depend on lipreading (speechreading) when the children do not have any language foundation to base on while trying to lipread. It is very tiring, frustrating, and put a lot of fear into young deaf and hard of hearing children when they can not understand, and adults get impatient after trying to repeat verbally again and again, they tend to show some anger because they get tired of repeating too often. The children can sense it quickly, so they try to bluff their way around to act like they understand to avoid the adults’ impatience or anger. Oralism upbringing was very negative to my self-esteem. I had no self-esteem. Many hearing people (hearing parents and professionals) will do anything to stay with oralism.

It affected me deeply because I was “taught” that I was NOT okay, because I am not hearing….I have to work so hard to think like hearing people, dress like them, behave like them, and talk articulately (meaning by perfect speech by voice) like them, in spite of being profoundly deaf since birth. They never say that I am not “normal.” Just that they teach me that sign language is BAD, not good for me at all, and I will LOSE speech if I learn sign language. They praised me greatly for speaking (although no one could understand me outside of my deaf classroom), and I was better than those who use sign language and I received positive praises for talking, and looked down on other peers who struggled with speech. I received years of speech training and speech reading. Many sounds are not visible so I had to catch few words on lips and work so hard at a lot of guesswork to make some sense what the person is saying, and respond “correctly” to them so they know that I am on right track, but most of time I “goofed” and I get funny look from hearing people. It sure shatters my self-esteem, and makes me want to hide from them forever. I managed to master “survival skills.” They do not help me with talking much. Only ask, “where is bathroom?” Just basic sentences. Is that considered being successful? To me, it’s failure and a lot of waste time which could be focused on education.

The comments by others have many good points. I am very disappointed for missing out so much during my growing years. I had so much misunderstandings which took me a long time to clear things up. It caused me to be much delayed in social skills with people. It took me a while to catch up with education when I entered into Gallaudet Univesity. I do not care how it works for some people, but I have seen firsthand how majority of my class mates did not success beyond the high school education.

Someone told me once that it is similar to being in closet. I agree with that because I was not a part of family whenever they talked. I was an “outsider” at home, at school, and elsewhere. That feeling of being outsider is very hard to overcome even though I adopted ASL and deaf culture. These feelings of being displaced persist with me. I have good family, just that they did not understand the importance of having good communication.

The saddest tragedy is that I can not go “home” to my oralism roots. Once they know that I use sign language, they ban me forever from ever visiting their oral program. These oral children are closed off from other deaf people who use sign language.

http://blog.deafread.com/mishkazena/2007/04/14/is-oralism-child-abuse/

Hello,

I totally support this because it is indeed ironic that hearing babies can be taught ASL skills while deaf babies can NOT be taught ASL skills but rather be forced to learn AVT methods instead....I believe too much time is lost in developing the language skills.  They can chose to speak later on in life if they desire, but when they're very young, signing is vital to the language, emotional, mind, creative thinking, and so much numerous others that are so critical to the wholesome development of the child.  I am thrilled to see that more people getting involved with this, and I feel it is way overdue for that.  I am with them totally!!!  Hope you will lead your support for this cause.  Bless your heart.  Di

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