Thought you would be interested in visiting Jamie Berke’s blog wherein she wrote about the newly-founded Las Vegas Charter School for the Deaf with an emphasis on a bilingual-bicultural approach for K-3. All teachers have ASL skills. http://deafness.about.com/b/2008/04/24/welcome-las-vegas-charter-school-of-the-deaf.htm).

Hi Trudy! Congrats on your new Deaf infant and your amazing journey of motherhood with all exciting experiences, nurturing moments, and language development. See how your baby fastens to eye gazing as she becomes aware of different facial expressions. From there, language emerges. It is reaLLY EXCITING. I look forward hearing from you about your baby later on.

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What your article really addresses is a more fundamental experience. Of (hearing) parents standing in the shoes of their deaf child and making an exciting world from their perspective. That is a tremendous concept, and requires parents to really reach for a new level of selflessness. The environmental experience is also is so basic that it might be easily overlooked in the race for language, English or ASL. But it’s an important first step, that is, trying to see the world from your deaf kid’s perspective. I think it will impact later experiences, like how to arrange a party that is mixed hearing and deaf or a family gathering your deaf kid might be the only deaf person there, etc.

Thanks for some of your practical suggestions. I would’ve loved to read this when E was a baby. We did a lot of play in mirrors. Where we were living at the time had a big mirror on the back of our bedroom door, and I’d sit there with him on my lap and sign books and make faces. it was so fun!

Congrats!

Julie

However we are emphasizing on visual learning especially for babies and children who cannot fully benefit from hearing devices, balancing with options as many of them eventually will grow up becoming members of Deaf community. They should enter well equipped with fluency in both languages.

The mindset that Anne pointed out in her translation focuses mainly for deafbabies without functional residual hearing or cochlear implants. My suggestion to Anne and Diane to modify the suggestions to incorporate sound with the assumption the baby/child has functional hearing. For example, when the mother plays with the toy violin strings, ratherthan focusing on the “feeling”, add the sound effects in ASL. Here I am speaking from experience with my bilingual son who has a CI.

It is becoming more rare for a profoundly deaf child to be implanted very young. Show some flexibility by modifying the information above in order to show new parents that sound effects and spoken language nedn’t bhe excluded from the changed mindset.