Inner Lives of Deaf Children: Interviews and Analysis

1. Beginnings

1 1. The term context is used throughout the text to refer to singular or multiple circumstances that contribute to a person’s situation, particularly in relation to the being or becoming of the person as deaf and the perspectives one holds on various aspects of his or her life. 1 Beginnings “How do I start for the Emerald City?” “It’s best to start at the beginning. All you do is follow the yellow brick road.” “But what happens if I . . .” “Just follow the yellow brick road.” —The Wizard of Oz, 1939 Like Dorothy in the classic children’s story The Wizard of Oz, our journey through life is full of surprises, and at each crossroad we are faced with experiences, mysteries, and challenges that help to determine what the future will hold. No crystal ball can foretell which critical events and experiences that occur in childhood will direct our later thinking and decisions. Becoming the person that we believe ourselves to be, the development of selfconcept , is a lifelong process. For all of us, certain events and personal characteristics stand out as we reflect back on our lives and what led to our self-perceptions and the decisions we made. For me, many of these reflections involve growing up as a deaf child in a hearing family, attending a hearing school, and not understanding at the time that I was deaf or what that meant. As an adult, I can now put those childhood experiences into perspective in the context of being deaf because now I understand its meaning.1 But what being deaf means to me may be different from what it means to anyone else. No two deaf or hard of 2 Inner Lives of Deaf Children hearing people are alike. Each of us carries a set of historical experiences , perceptions, relationships, and individual psychological and social realities that contribute to our unique perceptions of self and experience. The symbolic interactive process of language and how we interpret communicative interactions informs our self-perceptions and our perceptions of others. The following story is just one example of how this process can play out in a deaf child’s life. Trisha, a ten-year-old deaf girl, came to my office one day with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Can I talk to you?” she asked. Then she sat down in the seat next to my desk and with profound sadness she confided, “My mother doesn’t love me anymore.” She went on to tell me about a note her mother had written, which actually expressed the enormity of her love for Trisha. Trisha, however , had misinterpreted her mother’s note. She explained that the note, which her mother had placed on her nightstand, read, “I couldn’t love you more.” This little girl’s interpretation of her mother’s words caused her much pain. Fortunately, I was able to help this little girl understand that the meaning of her mother’s statement was different from the meaning she had perceived, and she left my office that morning recovering from her distress and carrying a renewed sense of herself, her mother, and their relationship . Sociologists tell us that our self-perceptions and the meanings that we ascribe to situations are ever changing because our experiences and interactions—our biological, cognitive, and social realities —constantly change. Thus, the images that we have of ourselves as adults may grow out of or be different from those we had as children . Symbolic interaction is a sociological theory that explains how perceptions of self come from how we interpret our interactions with others (Mead, 1934; Berger, 1963). Cooley’s (1970) looking glass theory suggests that self-concept is a reflection of how we believe others see us, and these beliefs continue to develop in response to various interactions. We develop a sense of meaning in our lifeworlds from these social and environmental interactions (Walsh, 2000). Trisha’s story is a small example of this theory at work. I mention symbolic interaction here because it sheds light on the Beginnings 3 2. Epistemology refers to the frame through which one views the world, which influences our perceptions of situations, of others, and of interactions. 3. Lifeworld is a term I use loosely to refer to the general aspects of a person’s life—one’s self, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, events, experiences, relationships, and the systems with which people interact. value...