Featured!
I am excited to share that this article has been featured in An Injustice! publication for Deaf Awareness Month and was selected as an Editor's Pick on Medium!
Montreal, circa 2000
“Use your voice when you talk to him,” a parent asks — no, directs me.
I am at Deaf camp. Their child is at Deaf camp.
I am 17 years old and volunteering as a camp counsellor at a sleepover camp. This week is for our youngest group of campers, aged 6–9, so there is a parent and caregiver visiting day halfway through.
We’re sitting at lunch in a noisy cafeteria, enjoying conversation in American Sign Language (ASL), the primary language at this Deaf camp. All the children are Deaf and all know ASL.
I volunteered at two different Deaf camps for several years in my early teens, and there were some commonalities I observed. For one, most children who wore hearing aids or cochlear implants (CIs) abandoned their technology within the first day, sometimes within the first few hours.
My personal experience
I’m Hard of Hearing but grew up in a mostly hearing family. My immediate family does not sign. I have 3 Deaf second cousins, two of whom are fluent in ASL, but didn’t even know this until I met them at a funeral when I was 14 years old.
I started learning sign language when a Deaf teammate joined my hockey team, I think we were 11 or 12 years old at the time. I learned ASL from her throughout the season, and we became close friends.
That summer, she invited me to go to a Deaf hockey camp, and I experienced a mixture of emotions. At first, I was overwhelmed. ASL was the first language of most of the campers. Their signing was so quick, and I had been learning for less than a year.
Once I adapted, I was enthralled. I had originally registered to stay at the camp for one week but volunteered to work the following weeks when the younger campers attended and ended up staying the entire summer. And the next, and the one after that.
I very quickly became fluent in ASL and fell in love with the Deaf community and Deaf culture. It was a relief to not have to speak, to strain to read lips or to strain to hear something that wasn’t quite loud enough. Everything was loud. Everything was visual. Everything was beautiful.
Freedom
When I saw those children free themselves of their hardware and relax into a community that totally got them, one that spoke their language and wherein everything was accessible, I understood to some extent.
Everything was loud. Everything was visual. Everything was beautiful.
It is a relief to finally be in an environment where your needs are considered first and foremost instead of as an afterthought (or sometimes not at all).
At least 90% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents — some studies have estimated the rate to be as high as 96%. Some families learn to sign, many do not. Twenty years ago (and beyond), many families were actively discouraged from using sign language with their Deaf children.
Instead, professionals instructed parents to have their children fitted with hearing aids or CIs, to engage in speech therapy, and have them learn how to read lips. This was the case for some of the children attending Deaf camps back in my youth.
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