Lipreading reminders

One thing I knew would happen when having a second child is that I’d have to go through the motions once again of letting my hearing child know that Mommy and Daddy are deaf, what being deaf means, that we use sign language and that things are just a little bit different in our home mainly because the parents can't hear. For example, we look out windows to see who is at the door instead of shouting at an unseen knocker standing on the other side of a thick wall of wood, and we have captioning on our TV set to let us know what people are saying.

I knew I’d have to go through this all over again with Jesse. What I didn’t count on, however, was constantly having to remind him that I need to see his lips if I want to lipread him.

The big difference between my two hearing children is that one of them signs more than the other. Jennifer is the signer. And even though Jesse learned signs a lot quicker than Jennifer did as a toddler, Jesse is rarely signing to us. He hardly ever signs. At all.

So, for the most part, my husband and I have had to rely on lipreading him to understand him. Sometimes he will write things down to the best of his abilities or I’ll employ one of the many tricks I use to understand a non-signing child better (which I talk about in my deaf parenting book), but mostly, with Jesse, it’s all about lipreading.

The downside about that, though, is that, being 5, Jesse sometimes forgets that in order for us to lipread him, we need to see his lips!

I have sounded like a broken record lately because I have had to keep repeating certain reminders to Jesse when it comes to lipreading:

“Jesse, I can’t read your lips when your face is right in front of mine.”

“Jesse, I can’t read your lips if you cover your mouth.”

“Jesse, I can’t read your lips when you are looking away. You need to look at me when you talk.”

And I also tell him I can’t read his lips when he’s talking too fast or when there is food in his mouth.

I was raised in an oral home, so I don’t mind lipreading. As it is, we use both lipreading and sign language to communicate. But when it’s only lipreading, we have to make sure that the person speaking remembers certain guidelines to follow in order to make lipreading work. For Jesse, we have to repeat these reminders. We had to do the same thing with Jennifer when she was little. Many times, she forgot we can’t lipread her if we can’t see her lips. Eventually, the reminders sunk in. I hope they’ll sink in for Jesse, too. At some point.

Talking funny

One thing that is known about the deaf is that we occasionally “talk funny” – in that we mispronounce words. I have done this so many times. I would pronounce “media” as “meh-dia,” “suit” instead of “sweet” for the word “suite,” and “a-cow-stic” instead of “a-coo-stic” for the word “acoustic.” Even still, there are words I cannot pronounce correctly no matter how many times I am told how to pronounce these words. I cannot pronounce the word “anime” because I keep reading it phonetically. Even the word “Samhain,” which is in the title of my forthcoming novel, is a word I keep having a hard time pronouncing because, here again, I say the word phonetically. I am subscribed to a “Word a Day” mailing list, and I always pay attention to how the words are pronounced. For some words I know, I’ll be surprised to learn I’d been pronouncing it wrong!

But there is another kind of “talking funny” and that is when hearing people pronounce words differently, as though they have an accent or something. I am beginning to wonder if that is the case with Jesse.

When Jennifer was a toddler, she had a speech impediment. She could not say the ending “-th” in words and her “l’s” were “w’s” (she called her cousin, Laurie, ‘Waurie” and her friend Lilly became “Willy”). Of course, she outgrew it, but Jesse is going through it now, too. But not only is he doing that, he seems to be doing something else, too.

For example, this morning. He asked me how to spell the word “but” yet when he said that word, it looked like he was saying “boot” when I lipread him. I kept telling him how to spell “boot” but he kept saying that was not the word he meant. So I got Jennifer in on this. She said it sounded like he said “bout” (as in, “about”), but insisted that was not the word he wanted to know how to spell. Neither of us could understand him! And my attempts to try to get him to use the word in a sentence were not successful.

Finally, he wrote the word down as he thought it was spelled: “B-U-T.”

And you know what’s interesting? I had even guessed that word! I asked him if the word was “but” and he said no. I pronounced the word as it should be pronounced (like “butt”) and he had not understood me.

Had he even heard me correctly? I pondered this for a while. Sometimes the kids say they don’t hear ME speaking to them very well, and even Jennifer has told me I don’t pronounce words all the way. This is strange because I was able to talk before I became deaf (I was 13), and so I figure my speech is fine. Or maybe I had not spoken loud enough, a common problem for someone who can’t judge how loud her own voice is.

Nevertheless, I was concerned. The word Jesse meant was “but” yet Jennifer had HEARD “bout.” Was it possible Jesse was saying words wrong?

I know he will have a speech therapist when he enters elementary school (just as Jennifer did – and this was what helped her get over her speech impediment) but I thought maybe we should look into seeing one sooner. I brought this up with my husband and he said not to worry about it, though he DID sit down with Jesse himself to go over the speech thing.

So I guess we have to wait until he goes into elementary school and starts seeing a speech therapist. Oh, boy, it’s going to be a long summer. Ironically, even if I wore a hearing aid, I still might not be able to understand all of the words Jesse says to me each time he speaks to me. Not if he is not saying the words correctly.