Friday after Thanksgiving we had a mom and her little guy over to play. The mom is hard of hearing and wears a hearing aid, and their little guy is just a bit older than Peter. The two boys have the same hearing aids, and similar hearing loss. The other little guy LOVED playing with the crinkly Mylar that our Early Start teacher gave us. He seemed to react to the sound more than Peter does....I hope it's only because he is a little older.
While the boys were rolling around, drooling on things, and grabbing crinkly things, I got to talk to the mom. She was raised to be Oral, and can lip read, and uses her hearing aid to help clarify what she sees. She learned ASL as an adult, and works using ASL now. I think she wishes she had learned ASL as a child, too. Knowing how sensitive the topic of CIs might be, I did say "if Peter gets CIs" that I wanted to continue to add to his ASL vocabulary, that I wanted to give him everything, every opportunity to learn and succeed. She said her mother in law really pushed them to get their son CIs, but they hadn't decided anything yet. She said that before she learned her baby was deaf she thought there would be no question- if they had a deaf baby that would be that, but now it's so much more complex. I don't envy them their decision. For Peter, I can embrace ASL, but our family speaks English (and some French and Spanish), and we want the same for him. When your family language is ASL it might be more complicated.
The mom was so great about helping me with my signs. I know it must take extra work to understand my attempts at ASL. I felt like I was back in Beginning Spanish, trying to express adult, complex thoughts in my two-year-old vocabulary ;)
I hope we get to see them again, soon. It will be good for Peter to grow up knowing deaf/hoh peers, even if they don't go to school together. Also, I really enjoyed getting to know the mom, and would like to get to know her better.
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