Lily's first language is ASL, she has been using sign language since she was 5 months old. After she received her cochlear implants we introduced her to spoken English. It has been a really confusing battle on some fronts for us as a family. Most of the medical professionals we came in contact with insisted that we should not sign with Lily because it would slow her speech development. However, I have many deaf family members who do not have cochlear implants and use sign language to communicate. We felt it was very important for Lily to continue to learn ASL and be able to live in both worlds, the hearing world and the deaf world. This was somewhat difficult for us because we are hearing parents. We are learning sign to keep up with Lily, but she is a fast learner. Obviously the biggest part missing is that we are unfamiliar with the deaf culture. To truly be in both worlds she needs the language and culture from both, right?
Lots of learning through play in this picture!
A few months ago we were introduced to Stacy, who would soon become our family’s deaf mentor, through ASDB's toddler class that Lily attended this year. She had come in to give parents information about the deaf mentor program. Right away I knew it was something we were interested in! Within a few weeks we had our first home visit. We did not have an interpreter, but given the knowledge we currently had as a family with sign language we were able to communicate pretty effectively. Stacy was AMAZING at making sure we understood what she was signing. Soon we had a second visit with Stacy and this is where something happened that we had never seen before....Lily loved her! Lily is very shy and even still won't talk and interact with family outside of the members who live in our home. To see her sit in Stacy's lap, sign with her, and interact like she does with family almost made me cry. My daughter was connecting with someone she had only met once before and it was like she had known Stacy all of her life. I think both Stacy and I agreed that Lily knew they were alike and their personalities meshed amazingly well. Shortly after our third home visit I realized Lily was learning sign language incidentally during our visits. We had been told this happens with spoken language and assumed it must be the same with sign language, but had not realized it so obviously before. Stacy had brought a game called ASL Word Match to the third visit. Lily sat with us for most of the game while we played and eventually got up to go play with her baby dolls. We were all sitting on the floor playing and after Stacy had won the game she showed the boys how to sign "hahaha". Lily was in her own world playing so I would have never guessed that she picked that sign up. Little did we know she did pick it up and used it just a few days later! Lily has also picked up Stacy's sign name and uses it regularly when talking about her. Stacy has become a beloved member of Lily's world very quickly!
We have had regular home visits with Stacy over the last several months and it has been a great experience for our family. This program has given a great support system to help us understand the deaf culture, to help us in learning more ASL through immersion, and Stacy recently supported us with the IEP process which was all new to us. It was great to have a deaf persons perspective and not only that, but a parent of deaf children's perspective. It can all be very confusing and overwhelming, especially when you know you have to fight for what is most appropriate for your child. Stacy was a great resource when we had questions about learning both languages, what appropriate goals might be for school, and she gave us a lot of information on the IEP laws and how they pertain to deaf students. We are proud to say this helped us to place Lily at PDSD for preschool next year! We feel that the knowledge of deaf culture, ASL, and the relationship that we have been able to expose Lily to have been invaluable with this program! Stacy has quickly become a true mentor to Lily and our family and we will forever be grateful for the experience and knowledge!
A home visit with Stacy where she was teaching Lily how to fingerspell "Anna".
While we really wish this program would have been available when Lily was much younger, we are so happy that it is available now. We hope that the program continues to grow and many families like ours can benefit from it!
Can you believe Lily will be going to preschool this next Fall? Where did the time go? This is a big step and created a hard decision for our family. We have been big promoters of Lily being bilingual/bimodal with ASL and spoken English as her two main forms of communication. This presented a big challenge for us in trying to figure out what the best option might be for our little bug. So far her language has included sign from ages birth to 12 months and from that point forward has been spoken English with signed support. She has learned both languages side by side and we want to ensure that this continues for her. This made the decision making process more complicated than for parents who only wish for their child to use spoken language.
What do you do in this situation...our choices were an intensive oral school for deaf and hard of hearing children, a community preschool with all hearing children and no other deaf children, the preschool at the school for the deaf, and a developmental preschool in our school district. The big thing is the IEP meeting and making sure we express our thoughts and concerns for Lily's language acquisition. It took us a while to wrap our heads around how to go about expressing our concerns and Lily's needs when it comes to the rest of the IEP team. How do you explain to a team that Lily is doing so great with speech yet ask for a classroom with signed support? This seemed to be our biggest challenge and may still be. Lily's hearing ability has not effected her cognitive learning. She knows her ABC's, numbers from 1-20, colors, and shapes in both ASL and spoken English. So, obviously this is going to create a challenge in getting what we want for her as far as the type of preschool classroom we want for her. So here is what we are hoping for her at this point. We had to go with our hearts and not our heads on this a little. We want her in a signed support preschool classroom. We also want to see her spoken English develop on track. Our plans, if we can convince the team to agree, are for Lily to attend two schools. The school for the deaf preschool so that she has that signed support to encourage her continued use of asl and the community preschool to support her spoken English. We plan to do this in two parts. Lily would attend the school for the deaf in the mornings the first half of her 3 year old year. The second half she would attend the school for the deaf in the morning and the community preschool in the afternoon. We are really hoping that our IEP team can agree with our goals for Lily.
With this decision being so hard I can only imagine what it will be like to figure out kindergarten! The one thing we do know is we want both languages fostered on an even level and will be doing so inside of our home and in Lily's school life as much as possible. With access to both languages our little Lily will move mountains one day!
