Raising Hearing Son With Sign Language

A Deaf parent's story on raising his hearing son with sign language.

Who am I, my name is Nathan, and I am the father of two hearing boys. I am going to tell a story about my first son who is 7 and in the first grade.

He is just an average boy, good in some areas, weak in a few, and a normal boy. He hears, talks, and signs. My younger boy is completely different, has no hearing issues, hears, talks, and signs of course. The boy's mother and father are Deaf culture; we have Deaf relatives as well.

I am the PE/health/Weightlifting teacher at the Washington School for the Deaf. Of course, I get to see other Deaf kids here at the school that help me think more about my parenting skills and what I try with my kids.

I often talk to my wife how we can be the best parents we can be because we are Deaf parents with two hearing boys. But the oldest, we learned a lot from, and the youngest is obviously way different from his older brother.

So that is why I feel that I must share my story with you hearing and Deaf parents that it is so important that you use sign language with your child, regardless if they are hearing or Deaf, sign language is a guaranteed language.

This is my way of contributing to the many videos I see popping up that have touched me about hearing parents raising Deaf children; their stories on how they were successful or had a rough time. Some are sad, some are positive. So this is my chance to contribute to the development of using sign language with all babies, hearing and Deaf.

So this is my story, it starts when I had my first son. When he was born, 7 years ago, me and my wife, who is from a Deaf family, me being the only Deaf in my family; we were at the hospital, the nurse talked to us, we told the nurse that we expected the baby to be born Deaf. The nurse wrote down on the notes that "Parents expect baby to be born Deaf, it is ok to fail the hearing test." We felt that was very nice that the nurse did not respond with sorrow or negativity.

So later when the baby was born, I went with the nurse and our son to get the newborn screening test. They put headphones on him and patches on his head; made him look like a mini Eminem.

Anyways, during the test, one of the ears took a long time and "failed". The nurse looked at the note and looked excited and said, "Maybe he will be Deaf". I liked that feeling when the nurse was happy and not negative. Then the other ear passed quickly. The nurse said, "Maybe one ear will be Deaf, lets try again just to be sure". We did the test again; the same ear took a long time but passed this time. I was fine with it; I told the nurse "honestly, the baby will get language regardless if he is Deaf or hearing". The nurse agreed.

As time went on, my wife and me gave our son sign language, which he responded well to. I can speak and hear pretty well for a Deaf person, but of course I have a "Deaf accent". Many people think I am hearing, but important, we gave him language. When he was about 5 months, almost 6 months old, he signed his first word was Milk.

Communication is so important, especially when you have a baby crying and you are trying to figure out what they want. Babies cannot begin to talk until much later and they can begin to sign much earlier; so when he signed milk at 6 months, that solved half of our mysteries when we knew he wanted milk or he wanted something else and was a happy boy when he communicated Milk and got it.

As time went on, when he turned one, he started to use his voice like normal hearing babies tend to do, but by that time, he had learned and used many signs to communicate with everyone. When he was one and a half to two years old, with my watching him and hearing people like my parents, we noticed that his speech was a bit diluted, and there were times when we noticed he would be completely Deaf and sleep through loud noises. We did not think much of it since he could be copying his parent's personality and voice tendencies as children often copy their parents, we didn't know...

For full script; inbox me your email address; Less than half the script has been posted here and in the comment box on my facebook page.

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