FROM WHERE I SIT: reply to Nyle DiMarco's message about "inspiration porn"... posted from @CSD Communication Services for the Deaf, Inc.
Re: Videos posted on social media showing "deaf babies 'hearing' for the first time".
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Caveat: I always do my best to address the 'topic' at hand, but know this:) No matter what the 'designated' topic, I always seem to revert back to what I believe to be the 'elephant' in the room when discussing anything Deaf-health related (mental/emotional/social-justice/equality/access/inclusion/education/identity-pride) in any way .. and that is the 'issue' at the heart of it all; 'language deprivation' perpetrated against d/Deaf children during the critical 'language-acquisition' years of birth-to-five...continuously... since 1880, with no end in sight.
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- Okay:) So, I have a new friend who tends to follow any so-called "inspirational" videos, the ones showing emotions elicited from "theHearing" when they watch a deaf baby 'hear-for-the-first-time', with ones he believes to be #realIyInspirational, ones that counter the underlying message of the ones Nyle includes under the label ''inspirationPorn.
He, my new friend, follows those kinds of videos with others, showing Deaf babies 'speaking', if you will, the eye-hand language of ASL, communi- cating their wants/needs up to a full year before Hearing toddlers are able to produce even one-two word utterances verbally.
The thing about the message from Nyle - about those 'baby-hears-for-the-first-time-videos) - is that mostly "theHeairng" will just get a puzzled look on their faces, roll their eyes, and, in the end DISmiss him as being "one of those (know-nothing?) "RADical deaf"! My new friend goes on to describe his experience when he stands up and takes the same position as does Nyle DiMarco on the matter of InspirationPorn, AND stands up for the DeafBabiesBill-ofRights, which of course is synonymous with Aslfirst for ALL Deaf babies, those same Hearing parents wave him off with taunts mimicking AG Bell's trick (propaganda) catch-phrases such as "Parent CHOICE" and "Communication OPTIONS" and/or today's Orwellian "NewsSpeak" they call "LSL"... only to label him also, as "one of those radical Deaf"! As for me, they make themselves believe I'm just an 'old' HearingParent of Deaf children ... it began for me in 1969) who has simply been 'brain-washed' by the 'angryDeafRadicals'; (sound familiar? Well, it is, the same way any 'supremacists' dismiss people-of-color as "angry 'this-or-that', so too is it with 'HearingParent 'followers-of-the-AUDist-agenda ... they scream 'brainwashed' as a way of negating any validity to mine, or Nyle's or anyone else able to leexpert in the area of things like language acquisition and cognitive development, or not), fully able and willing to guide them to the actual BEST PRACTICES for raising their precious children (with NO "delays in "language acquisition, key to all aspects of healthy, "normal" development (mental, emotional, social and certainly academic-literacy)!Anyway (?), then, to top it all off, when he, or myself even, try to reveal, UNcover and 'call-them-out' as the key AG Bell 'lies', the lies that hook HearingParents the most, which is that 'clear, intelligible speech' thing discussed above, again, with that being the only representation of "truly Human communication" and/or "proof of intelligence" absolutely necessary for learning to occur :( And, again, which is the #1 myth that HearingParents BELIEVE in their gut to be true
, but which none is... because the facts are, which
anyone with even minimal understanding of child development knows, that spoken language FIRST only fills the need-of-the-Hearing-child 0-5 years (and even that is debatable:),
because he/she are part of the "people-of-the-EAR" culture; WHEREas ...
AmericanSignLanguage, (ASL) FIRST fills the visual-language need-of-the-d/Deaf-child 0-5 years, belonging to "the people-of-the-EYE" culture!
P.S. My friend shows us those other videos and we get to watch the Deaf babies signing away, signing "intelligibly" at 6, 8, 10,12, 14 months and, further, are often-times BI-lingual by the time they are two or three years. NOW watch those videos and really BE BLOWN AWAY INSPIRED! Fact: deaf OR hearing: all babies can predictably be communicating expressively AND receptively so that they are understood well before age one (which lessens the frustration and minimizes the universally dreaded "terrible twos") ... as those lucky enough to become BI-lingual in ASL and ENGLISh and, again, do so NATURALLLY, make themselves understood just 'fine', thank you!P.P.S. Final message? "Hearing Parents"...can we just stop being afraid of 'sign-language'? THEY are lying to feed our fears, and we keep swallowing the same (blank-blip) THEY've been luring us to 'eat' since 1880, which is why most of our babies end up being labeled "oral FAILURES"... and that's what they evolved into but ONLY because we followed what I call "the AUDist-designed yellow-brick-road-to-Oralism hell", laid out before us by the author of "AUDism 101", Alexander Graham Bell:( Result? Our babies, and ourselves end up doing the worst possible harm if 'helping/guiding our children toward
Bottom line about us 'theHearingParents' learning 'sign-laguage': you don't have to become proficient right away; your kids will be doing that for you, and before you know it they will be helping you improve:) No worries! Watch them thrive while you have fun practicing, and can RELAX! Can you imagine relaxing and 'enjoying' the whole family's journey to a Bi-lingual, Bi-culural life and you don't need to travel anywhere to do it. But all of this only if you stop listening to the AUDist way of forcing your deaf baby to become a second-rate 'hearing' person instead of the most fulfilled, well-educated, well-adjusted, empowered and happy Deaf adult he/she can be...asap!
- End -
Friday, February 1, 2019
From Where I Sit: "InspirationPorn"
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