Essays --

Recently, one little girl managed to light up national news and melt the heart of the public. A video of a kindergarten Christmas program has gone viral due to 5 year old Claire Koch of Clearwater, Florida. Instead of just singing along with the other kids, Claire did something else; she also signed the entire program in American Sign Language so her parents, who are deaf, could enjoy the program as well. Claire is a CODA, or child of deaf adult. Her parents have used ASL in the home since before she was born, and the little girl can now sign fluently. (Jernigan) As we learned in class, CODA is a term used in the hearing community; in the Deaf community, they are more likely to be referred to as â€Å"Mother Father Deaf.† 90% of deaf parents have hearing children (Moore & Levitan). A large percentage of CODAs have both deaf parents, because approximately 90% of Deaf people marry another Deaf person. (Filer, and Filer) When a hearing child is born to deaf parents, they are considered to be part of both hearing culture and deaf culture. They also are viewed as bilingual usually (if the deaf parents indeed use sign language). However, there are times where Deaf parents will not sign with their child. The reasons vary; some do it so they will not rely on their child later in life to be an interpreter for them, others may actually view sign language negatively. (Singleton & Tittle) Deaf parents raising hearing children can sometimes be thought of as them raising "foreign" children. The idea behind this is the fact that just because they were born to Deaf parents does not mean they will automatically inherit the Deaf culture. The children will grow up to know that, technically speaking, they would be share more with the hearing world. T... ...unity. (Preston) To those who were not previously fully immersed to a large degree in the hearing community, it can be a real shock. Being a child of Deaf adults is by no means easy. From the short time I spent talking to Jeremy back in October, I can tell that there is some definite frustrations sometimes. The idea that young children are sometimes the one link that Deaf parents have to the hearing world can be challenging to grasp. I myself probably would have gone along with having a child interpret for me if a situation warranted. Now that I have looked into the life of CODAs and know enough American Sign Language to have basic conversations, hopefully it will never come to that. I think if there was a little more effort by both the hearing community and Deaf community to come to a better understanding of the other, there might be less strain on these children.