Insight asks why there’s such a divide between the deaf and hearing worlds, and what we can do to bridge them. The Deaf Divide Tuesday, June 16 at 8:30pm on .
Over 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, who often have no prior knowledge of the complex world they’ve been thrust into.
When Natasha and Marc Kenney’s first daughter Amelie was born deaf, their first reaction was shock.
“It’s like being in a newborn bubble and enjoying your first moments with your baby, and then all of a sudden that bubble bursts,” Natasha told host, Kumi Taguchi on this week’s episode of Insight.
“I thought: wow, she won’t hear me say, ‘I love you’. Laughing together, talking – what does that mean for school and reading?”
After weighing up their options, the family decided to start auditory/verbal therapy at Brisbane’s . This saw Amelie receive a cochlear implant at seven months old, and intensive therapy to learn to listen and speak.
Amelie and her younger brother Xavier, who is also deaf, are now seven and five years old respectively and have started at a mainstream school, where they keep up with their peers. Founder of Hear and Say, Dr Dimity Dornan, said this is possible for most deaf children, provided they start the therapy as early as possible – ideally at birth.
Natasha and Marc said this approach has helped realise the dreams they have for their children. But for some in the Deaf community, cochlear implants and auditory/verbal therapy represent a controversial threat to a hard-won culture and language.
I just decided that I’d had enough. I just wanted to use sign language.
Dion Galea was also born profoundly deaf, and was implanted with a cochlear device at five years old. After that, they were moved from their deaf school, where they used sign language, to a school that took a more auditory/verbal approach – focusing on listening and speaking. Dion wasn’t allowed to use sign language to communicate, and teachers would cover their mouths with their hands to discourage lipreading.
“It was tiring,” Dion said.
They missed out on other classes to spend time in auditory practice, agonising over hearing soft sounds like the letter S. “It was a real struggle.”
While hearing people often incorrectly assumed Dion could hear perfectly with the cochlear implant, some deaf people saw the device as unnecessary even ableist, implying that deaf people needed to be ‘fixed’.
At 21, Dion decided to stop wearing their cochlear processor altogether.
“I just decided that I’d had enough. I just wanted to use sign language, Auslan,” Dion said. “If hearing people met me, they could meet me halfway, rather than me doing all the work.”
