Why I am sold on ASL!

We tried it, Auditory Verbal therapy...

I'm sure it works for some families, why else would it have gained so many devout followers. It's just not for my family.

Imagine a three year old strapped in a chair for 45 minutes hearing the same word(s) over and over until he uttered some sort of sound in the desired response time. I watched as J got more and more frustrated with his therapy and the required homework. I saw him use signs with his therapist, and she reacted as if he hadn't communicated anything. I watched Jake slowly begin to repeat sounds he thought he was hearing, most completely wrong, that he heard over and over. Key word... slowly.

Fast forward to the deaf/hard of hearing program through the public school system. J gets to play and learn in a normal classroom setting, just with a focus on language, both signed and spoken. He made 3 year's progress in one calendar year on one of the preschool language tests his progress is measured with. He loved school then, and still loves it. He learns new vocabulary almost daily, his articulation is improving, his social skills are at age level now, and he's learning appropriate behavior and language to express himself. What a difference! I'm convinced that had we continued A-VT, we'd still be sitting in a chair fighting with him to say that week's targeted phrase.

We've also been instructed to work as hard as we can against the natural tendency for deaf kids' brains to develop very large visual areas. Deaf kids/people are visually oriented, why fight with that? They need that strength to make up for what their ears don't pick up. I actually feel like I would be doing them a disservice, robbing them of a strength they need. They aren't hearing, and no amount of therapy will change that. They'll still struggle with what we hearing people don't even have to think twice about. Give them the visual strength and they can compensate.

As for the theory that signing interferes with spoken language, there is plenty of evidence out there to suggest otherwise. And, most importantly, the opposite has proven true in our house. J learns a groupd of new signs, and about a month later, begins using the words appropriately, and vise wersa. As the studies of bilingual children has shown, one language boosts the other, and the children learn to differentiate the two as they become increasingly fluent in each. ASL is just another language. I doubt anyone would object if we were teaching our children English and french from birth, so why not English and ASL?

Aside from all of the great benefits of being bilingual, signing is a necessity for us. There was an immediate relief of tension in our home the year we started learning sign language. Bath time, bedtime, pool days, and any days we couldn't or didn't use J's hearing aids were so much easier! What a relief to communicate - such a simple, taken-for-granted thing! These times alone would convince me to learn at least enough singing to "get by". Furthermore, there's no guarantee their hearing loss won't progress to total deafness one day. Where would we be then if we haven't learned any sign language??!