What I want for Christmas …
… is to see my family learn BSL and communicating with each other in BSL.
This is something that I probably never will see. My parents always say that they’re too old to learn and reckon that they would never practice enough as I’m in London etc. However, I feel that, as it’s very likely Rach and I will have Deaf kids (who we plan to bring up bilingually), my parents (and the rest of the family for that matter) need to learn BSL so that they can encourage the language development of the kids.
Why is it that hearing families with d/Deaf children are so reluctant to learn BSL? Does the medical model of deafness as portrayed by clueless audiologists really get to them that much? Why don’t they *listen* to what their kids are saying? Surely we know better than the doctors who don’t even know how to communicate effectively themselves.
Tags: Christmas