On Monday 14/06/2004
Personal Column - Children of Deaf Parents
Our letter on Personal Column this week is from a listener who would
like to know more about deaf people and parenting.
Dear Life Matters
I have a sister who is deaf and she and her husband (who is also deaf) are
doing their best (and doing very well) to raise their hearing children.
But I can imagine that it will get difficult, especially in the teenage
years.
I think it would be very interesting, and very heartening for deaf people,
to know about other deaf parent’s issues and how policies and parents
are dealing with this.
Thank you for your fantastic program.
All the best
To begin to understand the issues involved in deaf parents of hearing
children, we have with us Julie Judd – herself the adult child of deaf
parents.
Transcript/Extra Details:
Rebecca Gorman: And on Radio National, I’m Rebecca Gorman, and to Personal Column now, and this week from a listener who would like to know more about deaf people and parenting. Their letter goes like this:
Dear Life Matters,
I have a sister who’s deaf, and she and her husband, who is also deaf, are doing their best and doing very well to raise their hearing children, but I can imagine that it will get difficult, especially in the teenage years. I think it would be interesting and very heartening for deaf people to know about other deaf parents’ issues and how policies and parents are dealing with this.
Thanks for your great program. All the best.
Well to begin to have a look at these issues involved in deaf parents and hearing children, Julie Judd has joined us. She herself is the adult child of deaf parents, and she’s also involved with CODA, an international group of children of deaf parents. Welcome, Julie.
Julie Judd: Hallo.
Rebecca Gorman: Hi. What do you think of that letter, is that a normal sort of anxiety of the families of people who are deaf?
Julie Judd: I think so, very much so. I have a lot of queries from people in the community that get on to me through the Victorian Deaf Society asking questions similar to that. It’s difficult because of course these parents can’t hear, and we’re living in an auditory world, and of course our experiences of hearing people, we will come across challenges that we’re not sure how to handle if we were deaf.
Rebecca Gorman: And just speaking of auditory things, I just called you Julie Udd, when your name’s actually Julie Judd, so I beg your pardon about that.
Well look, your parents are deaf; what was your life growing up like? Presumably it was very different to some of your mates at school?
Julie Judd: Very different, although it was an experience that I would never give up. The community I think as a whole sees deafness as a disability, sees it as something that is below the standard of what we consider normal, that there’s something wrong with these people, and for me, in my adult years looking back, it was actually something that was a good experience but the negativity came from those people who considered us less than normal as a family.
Rebecca Gorman: So at the time, you felt the negative stress, did you?
Julie Judd: Yes I did.
Rebecca Gorman: In what ways?
Julie Judd: Basically the hearing community don’t understand deafness. It’s a different way of looking at the world. Looking at the world visually only, and not auditorily, gives deaf people a different way of thinking about things, a different way of I guess experiencing life.
Rebecca Gorman: So what sort of incidences were there that left you with a sort of sour taste?
Julie Judd: The negative comments that I would hear when I would be with my parents, that they wouldn’t hear, that people would say under their breath, but loud enough for me to hear, were really horrible, like I can remember sitting on the bus and the bus driver saying, ‘Oh that deaf and dumb lady’s back there, making a noise’, and ‘My goodness, they shouldn’t be allowed to be parents’.
Rebecca Gorman: Oh, how devastating for you.
Julie Judd: Yes. Things like that, people can be really cruel, and I think that the bus driver didn’t realise that I could hear, because I would always sign with my Mum. So to him, he probably thought that I was a deaf child of a deaf parent.
Rebecca Gorman: How old would you have been then?
Julie Judd: I think probably five or six.
Rebecca Gorman: Right, so from very early on you were battling those negative stereotypes?
Julie Judd: Definitely.
Rebecca Gorman: So what did you do? What kinds of things were you having to do for your parents?
Julie Judd: The only way I can explain it is that I was between two worlds. I knew the deaf world very well, although I wasn’t deaf myself, so I don’t claim to know what it’s like to be deaf. But I could also hear, and I went to a hearing school and had hearing friends. So always explaining and trying to juggle both worlds, explaining to Mum what they meant, when they looked really angry, when they perhaps weren’t angry in the tone of their voice, and just trying to clarify the communication styles of both people in a situation, so being the go-between.
Rebecca Gorman: Did you have to do that in an official way6 quite often, like under Doctors and say even lawyers, things like that?
Julie Judd: Yes, I did. A lot of examples I can give. I mean everything you have in your life, such as going to the doctors, family funerals.
Rebecca Gorman: So, what liaising with the funeral director and things?
Julie Judd: Liaising with the family members who couldn’t sign, liaising with the doctor on very personal issues to do with my Mum especially. And the doctors just having no qualms at all, telling me all these things as a little girl, and then me not understanding it, because I wasn’t really old enough to understand, and trying to then explain it to my Mum, and my Mum being very frustrated that I couldn’t tell her what the doctor was saying, and the reason being was because I didn’t have the general knowledge at 5, 6 or 7 to be able to articulate that into languages.
Rebecca Gorman: Incredible responsibility for you at a young age.
Julie Judd: Yes, yes I think so, and I think that shaped who I am today. However I think had my Mum realised how difficult it was, she perhaps would have put up some boundaries, and insisted on having an interpreter, although back then, that was pretty scarce, and I think today even though we have all of these services in place, it’s still not as prevalent as it should be.
Rebecca Gorman: And so that does bring us to some advice for deaf parents who have hearing children. You’ve said there that they should put up some limits; what else are you thinking of?
Julie Judd: Well I think the wider community get access to parenting courses in schools; deaf parents don’t have that privilege, they can’t go along to their kids’ school and join in on a parenting course because usually there’s a problem with funding the interpreter. The same thing happens at hospitals, and God knows wherever else you need to go to live your daily life, but definitely if they can insist on getting an interpreter for those things that they perhaps want to be in control of. Putting up those boundaries where children can be children and adults can be adults, sometimes that’s quite difficult because you’re in a situation where communication is important, that it occurs right then and there. So I think parenting classes need to be established for deaf parents, and also a feeling of pride needs to be instilled in deaf parents that they need to celebrate the fact that their kids are often bilingual and bi-cultural, and not deny them the experience of growing up within the deaf community as well.
Rebecca Gorman: So what do you mean that they don’t necessarily want you to expand fully in the hearing community?
Julie Judd: Well often deaf parents see their hearing children as hearing kids, but they don’t see them as belonging to their community, because of the fact that they can hear. But I remember growing up and my Mum and Dad being part of the deaf community going to deaf clubs and I would play and know all about the way that the deaf community runs, and I really felt part of that community. But as I got older during the teenage years, those identity issues crop up, and I didn’t know where I belonged in one sense, but I had a very strong sense of sign language, fluent in sign language, and I guess I felt that that went by the wayside, that I wasn’t as embraced by the deaf community when I got older, it was a bit like they were preparing me for adult life in the hearing community.
Rebecca Gorman: That’s very interesting, because our letter specifically asked about the teenage years, so what would you advise for that period in particular?
Julie Judd: Well just to recognise that your children are part of two worlds, they’re part of the deaf world, because that’s their heritage and they’re part of the hearing community as well. So just be aware that you don’t deny them the opportunity to express themselves in sign language with deaf people, and with hearing people, and just be aware that there’s a lot of negativity around being different, especially in those adolescent years.
Rebecca Gorman: How did you go on with your relationship with your parents, because I presume it was quite different because the responsibilities you were carrying for them was quite different. I wonder how it evolved then through the teenage years and into adulthood?
Julie Judd: Well I think as I spoke earlier about the boundaries, my boundaries were all over the place. Mum wanted me to be a child in some instances, but then wanted me to be the adult in a lot of others. So would give me responsibility far beyond my years: examples, medical, legal type things. But then on the other hand if I wanted to go out with my friends late, that was just not acceptable, and I found that really difficult because on the one hand I was trusted with a whole lot of really detailed and personal information to deal with, and then couldn’t be trusted as an adult to do the things that young kids start to do when they get older.
Rebecca Gorman: And was it very hard to leave home, for example?
Julie Judd: I felt very guilty when I left home. I left home when I was 16 to live on my own. I found that it was a lot of pressure, and yes, I felt very guilty, worried how they would get on without me. My younger sister was still there and I felt like I was abandoning her with all of that responsibility. But it was just something that I needed to do to just spread my wings at that time.
Rebecca Gorman: And what about the adult relationship with your parents?
Julie Judd: It had its moments, but when I later got married and had children, that relationship I think became much closer, I was much more tolerant of the things that my Mum especially, because she used sign language primarily to communicate, what she had to put up with. Just the ignorance of the hearing community, it’s unbelievable. I mean some people not even being able to write notes to get their message across, no patience and that sort of thing.
Rebecca Gorman: Julie, it’s an incredible story, just your own life story, and thank you very much for sharing your experience with us.
Julie Judd is the adult child of deaf parents and a sign language interpreter.
Guests in this story:
Julie Judd
Adult child of deaf parents, Sign Language Interpreter
Story Producer and Researcher:
Lucy Mahon