For Carl, from the United States, this language was a gift from his Deaf parents.b Although deaf from birth, he was able to label items, string signs together, and express abstract thoughts in American Sign Language (ASL) at a very young age. Most Deaf babies of signing Deaf parents begin to produce their first signs by the age of 10 to 12 months. In the book A Journey Into the Deaf-World, it is explained that “linguists now recognize that the capacity to acquire a language naturally and to pass it on to one’s children is rooted deeply in the brain. Whether the capacity surfaces in a signed language or a spoken language is quite immaterial.”

Sveta was born in Russia into a third-generation Deaf family. Along with her Deaf brother, she acquired Russian Sign Language. By the time she was enrolled in a preschool for Deaf children at the age of three, her natural signed-language skills were well developed. Sveta admits: “The other Deaf children did not know signed language and would learn from me.” Many Deaf children have had Hearing parents who did not sign. Signed language was often passed down at school from older Deaf children to younger ones, enabling them to communicate easily.

Today more and more Hearing parents are learning to sign with their children. As a result, these Deaf youngsters are able to communicate effectively prior to attending school. In Canada, this was true of Andrew, whose parents can hear. They learned signed language and used it with him at an early age, providing him with a language foundation on which he could build in the years to come. Now the whole family can communicate with one another on any topic in signed language.

Many educational centers for Deaf children around the world have discovered the benefits of using signed language early in the child’s development of language. (See boxes on pages 20 and 22.) Such have found that exposing the young Deaf child to a natural signed language and developing a linguistic base will lay the basis for greater achievement academically and socially as well as for the later acquisition of a written language.

A United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization commission on Deaf education stated: “It is no longer acceptable to neglect sign language, or to avoid taking an active part in its development in educational programmes for the deaf.” It must be said, though, that whatever educational choice parents make for their Deaf child, the full participation of both parents in their child’s development is of critical importance.—See the article “To Reach My Child, I Learned Another Language,” in the Awake! of November 8, 1996.

Understanding the Deaf World

When Deaf children become Deaf adults, they often confess that what they wanted most from their parents was communication. When his aged mother was dying, Jack, a Deaf man, attempted to communicate with her. She struggled to tell him something but wasn’t able to write it and didn’t know signed language. She then fell into a coma and later died. Jack felt haunted by those final frustrating moments. This experience moved him to advise parents of Deaf children: “If you want fluent communication and a meaningful exchange of ideas, emotions, thoughts and love with your deaf child, sign it. . . . It’s too late for me. Is it too late for you?”

For years many have misunderstood the experience of Deaf people. Some have held the view that the deaf know almost nothing because they hear nothing. Parents have been overly protective of their Deaf children or fearful of letting them into the outside world. In some cultures Deaf people have been mistakenly described as “dumb” or “mute,” although Deaf people are usually not vocally impaired. They simply cannot hear. Others have viewed signed language as primitive or inferior to spoken language. It’s no wonder that with such ignorance, some Deaf people have felt oppressed and misunderstood.

As a young child growing up in the United States in the 1930’s, Joseph was enrolled in a special school for Deaf children that prohibited the use of signed language. He and his classmates were often disciplined for using signs, even when they could not understand the speech of their teachers. How they longed to understand and to be understood! In countries where education for Deaf children is limited, some grow up with very little formal education. For example, an Awake! correspondent in western Africa said: “Life for the majority of the Deaf in Africa is tough and miserable. Of all the disabled, the Deaf are probably the most neglected and least understood.”