Insight: I wish parents of deaf children would listen to their children (BSL)

I’ve worked in education for over ten years now supporting deaf children in mainstream schools across my borough. My job means I visit deaf pupils in some of their lessons – mostly at secondary schools – and working with the schools SENCO to ensure we meet their needs.

I love what I do and it is very rewarding to see the impact my work has and the positive changes schools make and the progress deaf pupils achieve with the right support.

That said, we are under staffed, working more hours that we are paid for usually and with an emotional involvement that sometimes is hard to step away from.

I didn’t begin this job knowing sign language but I am now on paper a qualified level 3 BSL signer. I say ‘on paper’ because I communicate with my deaf pupils in numerous ways. Some of them prefer speech, some prefer sign and others may use makaton or a signed system due to their additional needs or disabilities.

I feel that deaf children do well when their school life and home life work well. I can implement changes in a school but I cannot unfortunately influence decisions that parents make when deaf children are at home.

I understand that there is sometimes a pressure from medical professionals to encourage deaf children to speak and this can be favoured over sign. But I’ve seen first hand how this is damaging for a child who has no foundational language and no access to sound.

A couple of months ago an incident happened which inspired me to write this blog.

A deaf boy that I’ve been visiting for a while has sadly fallen prey to bullies at his school. Other students spoke to teachers about it saying how they’d witnessed the deaf boy being shoved about and other children harassing him.

I spoke to the staff at the school who said the boy had not come forward with any reports or worries and his parents hadn’t been in touch to complain about it either.

The school made contact with his parents to which they responded and stated how nothing had been said about it and so he couldn’t possibly have been bullied.

I spoke to the deaf student by myself and asked him if he wanted to talk about anything with me. Although the boy has a profound deafness and unclear speech his parents do not sign and often speak “for him” when around other people.

They also instructed the school that he would not require a sign language interpreter and would be able to manage in lessons without additional sign support. He has a note taker and visits from myself as agreed in his support plan.

However, chatting to the boy about his experience at school in sign language it turned out that this bullying had gone on for some time and he was actually really suffering mentally with it.

He felt unable to tell anyone at school or at home because speaking felt like such an effort for him and nobody around him signed.

With the boys permission I wrote up what he had told me and shared it with his school and his parents.

Whilst the school were saddened to read this and were open to discussing more sign language support or opportunities to meet with a mentor who could sign, his parents have yet to respond to me.

I know this could very well be an isolated case but sadly I do see occasions where parents stubbornly want their child to communicate in their own home language, and aren’t considering the efforts or difficulties the deaf child has with that.

In this case it would make more sense for the parents to learn some sign language to at least take the burden off the child of having to always adapt to their communication system.

How can a deaf child be truly heard if nobody listens to them in their own language?

It upsets me to think about the child struggling with bullies but feeling unable to speak out and tell someone close to him about it. I am grateful he was able to speak to me but as I am not at his school full time, there are undoubtedly times where he feels alone and that breaks my heart.

I hope that more parents will consider the needs of their child before their own – after all isn’t that what being a parent is about?

As cuts are still being made in education and resources are stretched more than ever, I also hope to raise awareness in mainstream schools and teachers of the struggles deaf children face without the right support in place.

I would be keen to read in the comments how any other people working in education deal with getting non-supportive parents on board?

Thank you for reading this.

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – where readers are invited to share their story or news about their interesting job with The Limping Chicken.

If you have a story to share please email rebecca@rawithey.com 

Image courtesy of i-stock photos