As I was driving home from the mall today, I watched the six kids in the back as they chatted with each other. The two high school boys were conversing using mostly their voice, with some signs thrown in. The three girls were animatedly using American Sign Language. Eyebrows arched, shoulders shrugged and cheeks puffed as they skipped through conversations about residental school, camp and their plans for the night.
I thought back to a few months ago: I was at an anniversary celebration of a close friend and she introduced me to her cousin, a mom of a hard of hearing son who was in middle school. We chatted for a while, I told her about Illinois Hands & Voices and we talked about IEPs. Then the topic of socialization came up. I shared my frustrations about our school district–how there were nearly 70 kids with hearing loss and very little connection among the kids. What she told me next blew me away. “My son doesn’t have a single friend,” she said. I saw sadness on her face. “If he could just make one friend, it would be so much better.”
I couldn’t get that boy out of my mind. I grew up being the only hard of hearing kid in school, but I always had several close friends. I’m always looking for new situations for my kids to meet and connect with other kids, deaf, hard of hearing or hearing. So when my oldest son received an invitation to swim at a friend’s house a few weeks ago, I drove him over there.
I chatted with the mom and we talked about school, IEPs and other things. What she said next, blew me away. The mom revealed that it was the first time since they moved three years ago that her sons had friends over to their house. I watched as the group of kids horsed around in the pool with smiles on their faces. It was hard to believe that this was the first time a group of them had gotten together.
So today, as I watched the six kids connect with one another, I started to wonder about other deaf and hard of hearing kids and how they’re spending their summer. How many other kids are spending their summer social bluffing their way through group conversations, as I did? I had a great group of friends while growing up, but I still managed to be the Social Bluffing Queen when it came to parties and group outings. I didn’t address the social bluffing issue until many years later– after meeting deaf and hard of hearing people and learning what it was like to access group conversations without bluffing through them. Mark Drolsbaugh, my separated-at-birth-twin has a great series on social bluffing:
What will it take, asks Mark, to hang up the Super Phony cape for once and for all? “There are still too many Super Phonies flying around out there. We’ve got to rein them in and encourage them to live authentic lives,” says Mark.
Can it be done?
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15 responses to “Socialization for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Kids”
[…] any chords with you? This includes the Three Types near the end; click on each if you will. A Deaf Mom Shares Her World
[…] a chord with you? This includes the Three Phony Types near the end; click on each if you will. A Deaf Mom Shares Her World » Socialization for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Kids I follow this lady on occasion in other areas of the Internet. Maybe Jasin would also like to read […]
This is one of the biggest concern for deaf culture where there is little socialization during summer days. This is the reason why I wished I had join deaf camp.
I had to find a play group for my twins for socialization. I search on internet and found my way through ‘Meetup’. We did not know we were going to have childrne in this house. But we live on a busy street and not a kid friendly neighbor for them either. So, I’m stuck too but I hope we will move one last time into a neighbor where the twins can grow up with their friends with riding bike around the block and park nearby.
It will be nice to establish some sort of infants, toddlers, and teen playgroup socialization on alternate weekends with supervision? Or Meet 2 times a month for teen play group? I hope this helps!
Karen:
It’s a tall order but it can be done, indeed. I know all about “social bluffing.” Been there, done that. Seems that most of us who are either deaf or hard of hearing interacting with the hearing world tend to do that from time to time.
It’s led to some pretty embarrassing moments for me as I’m sure it has for you as well.
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Thanks for the link to that! It is very hard to understand the issues that Emmi, my youngest who is the only deaf member of our family, will face. I can only imagine and try to place myself in her shoes. While Emmi plays just fine with her sister’s friends, who all have normal hearing, she really comes alive around her classmates.
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Hello!
What a great post, and blog you have here!
You sure have your hands full!
How sad for the child that you mentioned with no friends. My son, who is 11, has moderate hearing los. He has lots of friends, but we do not know one other kid that wears hearing aids or has any kind of hearing loss. He does feel “different” and occasionally expresses his frustration with this. I keep telling him he’ s not alone – but, man, it’s hard to prove it!
We live in a fairly large school district…. and community… participated in a couple “Walk for Hearing” events… but, the few kids he met there were deaf…. which is cool, but, they didn’t stay in touch, or really hit it off (probably because my son doesn’t sign). I really wish he could meet some other HOH kids he could really relate to…
Looking forward to reading from you. I just started a blog recently… Do you mind if I blogroll you?
Deb
debcnys last blog post..“The kid with the hearing aids”…
Deb,
Why not contact your school district and several other districts around you and set up a coffee clatch at a nearby coffee shop? We did a few meetings with local families this way.
Our local public school is one of a few oral-based hard-of-hearing centers in the city. This is not saying much: it means that from K-3, kids are mainstreamed, given sign or cued support in class, and pretty much left to fend for themselves. Socially they are on their own. I feel like I hit a homerun this past spring in our IEP meeting when I shared that I’d like to see a cross-grade social group meet weekly during school hours for these kids, and they actually agreed to set it up. There are very few hard of hearing kids at this school, and my K-age daughter still seems to think she’ll “grow out of” her hearing aids. I want her to be with HOH older kids and peers regularly–and she does too. At times in my life when I’ve felt lonely and there has been no community for me, I’ve just had to make one. I think I am going to have to do this on behalf of someone else now–and teach my little girl to do this for herself for the rest of her life. I think it’s part of advocacy.
Yep, thats totally true
I tried getting Paula into the 6-12 y.o. Camp Sign this summer, but they wouldn’t make an exception. Next year! So this year we’ll just try to keep our connection with her little friend from her Deaf Ed class, and hope to attend a meeting of a newly-formed social group for parents of d/hoh in Chicago.
I have seen this in our school system, a public school w/ a H-I Program. There hwas a distance between H-I
kids and their classmates. Not an attitude thing, a communication issue.
We decided to better acclimate the students, (hearing and deaf) w/ one another and begin to develop an understanding between all. We had several elem. students and thought it best to start there.
We began a Little Tiger Sign Club, taught by teachers/parent volunteers. We expected about 30 kids the first year, and were stunned by the 98 students who signed up.
The next year, we were more prepared for a larger group, but were still overwhelmed by the interest of 218 students!
The third year unfortunatly did not happen. With the two lead teachers expecting babies, maternity leaves and not enough signing volunteers to accomodate the crowd. We were really sad to see it set aside.
We’d love to continue, but the Sign Club had grown well beyond a volunteer position, and would take a full time position to accomodate it. Something the school is not able to support financially at the time..damn budgets.
I still teach sign and introduce deafness to the students in my classroom once a week for half and hour. We also encourage sign/accomodations through out the regular learning/social program everyday. Its been a great eye opener for both students and staff alike. I love the way our school accepts ALL of its students.
Our H-I kids don’t feel as set aside, and the other students are loving learning and using sign to communicate in everyday life. I see kindergarten kids signing on the playground, not w/ just the H-I kids, but with other hearing kids too – its beautiful. WIN/WIN
I think that awareness on understanding fellow kids who are deaf should start from home. It should be somethign that is addressed from the dinner table since this is something that kids who don’t have difficulties in hearing or speaking will encounter at some point in their lives. I think this is a very importnat topic that we should discuss in our dinner group. Good think i stumbled in this site.
Heather (dinner group fan)
I have noticed that at a very young age their is not so much of a barrier with children that are “different”. However as children get older everything socially becomes harder and it must be very hard for a deaf child. In any child their is such a huge pressure to “fit in” these days, I find it very sad.
When they are very young, kids do not consider language, race, sex, nationality and any other differences. Yes, it is very sad they are tought to “fit in” and they soon learn it
i’m the child, of a severely hearing impaired mother. in addition,i had a really crazy, alcoholic-pill popping father. you might surmise,my life has not gone that smoothly,it hasn’t. there seems to be a lot less dialogue, on the children of hearing impaired, than on hearing impaired children. it’s quite frustrating. i welcome all comments re support,literature,grps websites, etc. thank you…….