ASL

I started signing at 6 months old, and I've used it ever since.  Once my parents were introduced to the deaf world they started to learn ASL.  They had a tutor come over and they learned how to sign so that they would be able to communicate with me.  Funny story: My dad was practicing by fingerspelling to the radio in the car, and this one guy thought my dad was throwing gang signs at him, so he followed him home and was ready to pick a fight.  My dad quickly explained that he just found out his daughter is deaf and he is learning how to sign. Haha!

After I got my cochlear implant the audiologist told my parents to stop signing with me because they believed that it wouldn't help me learn how to talk.  However, I had a huge signing vocabulary and my parents didn't want to suddenly stop communicating with me.  So I grew up with both signing and talking.

The first time I heard a bird, I signed to my dad asking what that sound was.  My dad signed back and told me it was a bird.  With ASL I learned to hear quicker because my parents would tell me what I was hearing.  

"daddy"

"it's stuck!"

"kitty"

"gum"

"mom"

"I'm scared!"

If you have a deaf child I would highly recommend learning ASL.  I would also recommend continuing using ASL even after your child has the cochlear implant surgery.  It has helped me in many ways.  Before I got my implant, I was able to communicate by using ASL.  I can't imagine not being able to communicate with your deaf child. By knowing ASL, it also helped in speech therapy.  They were able to tell me what I needed to do by using ASL.

Even though ASL isn't my main source of communication, I'm glad I still know it.  I constantly use it throughout my life.  Whenever I need to take off my speech processor  like when I am swimming or at night, my parents sign so that I can understand them.  I am very good at lipreading, but it is very challenging.  ASL allows me to get the full conversation clearly.  Another time when ASL was very useful was when I lived in Luxembourg for a year and my speech processor broke.  I'll blog about this another time, but long story short I was deaf for two weeks (and it was awful!)  My parents interpreted for me in ASL.  It would have been very challenging if we didn't know ASL.  I'm glad that I still had a source of communication when my speech processor broke.  ASL is also very helpful in situations where it is noisy and I can't understand.   If I didn't understand what someone said like when a guide is speaking on a tour or in a big crowd, I turn to my parents and they sign for me.

My best friend, Tori, knows ASL and I love that she knows it.  We communicate all the time in ASL.  We sign across the hall at school, at church, whenever I didn't catch something, or just for fun.   It is very helpful to have a best friend that knows ASL, so thanks Tori for learning ASL!  We both enrolled in ASL 1 in 9th grade and now we are in ASL 4.  I absolutely love it!

I'm thankful that my parents chose to learn ASL for me, and that they kept signing even after I got my implant.  It helped me when I was little, and it continues to help me.  I am constantly using ASL, even though it isn't my main source of communication.  I'm thankful that I know American Sign Language.