Re: Vanilla Deaf

[Guest guest]

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Thank you for your kind and fiercely supportive kudos for . ) I have

another story to share. There is an all deaf family we know. The father, the

mother, the two sons and the daughter are all deaf. The father and mother both

work in education and are well respected in the Deaf and hearing community.

They are also openly distrusted and shunned by some in the deaf community

because they choose to use their voice, and worse yet, use their voice to

support their friendships with hearing people. They offer tremendous support to

hearing parents of deaf children as well. They are even treated suspiciously by

some of the deaf community because their children do well in school and are

fluent in English word order when writing. Sort of as if they were traitors to

an unspoken agreement. It brings me some misplaced comfort to know that the

" deaf community " can shun it's best for being too inclusive and open minded and

successful.

Their sons also embraced the " no hearing aids/no voice " ethic while at CSUN - it

was explained to me that it can be part of the teen rebellion and taking a stand

on their own outside of the IEPs and close watch of the mainstreamed public

school experience. With how their parents are - whole persons first - I can't

imagine they would grow up to be close minded mistrusting deaf adults. But

their mom joked about it with me, not realizing how the anonymous figure at the

receiving end of the joke would be if he went to CSUN - our children are a

several years apart, so the idea of going to college might have seemed

remote to her.

As I said earlier today - I know it's not their responsibility to contribute to

's world - yet it pains me so deeply how the unthinking can hurt so much.

And I lament the missed opportunity for all of them to have made something

wonderful from it.

And I learned to be mindful that truly the wounded walk among us all the time -

and I meet them with the question in my heart - " what burden are you carrying? "

As Plato said " Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. "

Yuka