Imagine being a small child and not hearing the loving, nurturing voice of your parent. Even worse, imagine being a few years old and your parents not knowing that you could not hear their loving and nurturing voice, but rather thinking that you are just not a very talkative child. Or imagine being the parent of a child who you find out has is deaf. What do you do? As a parent, you have never been faced with this issue. These scenarios are both equally hard and unfortunately true. There are many cases where children grow up deaf with hearing parents who never really are allowed the chance to blossom and work a grade level. But, of course, as in everything, there are those children who are lucky and are able to function "normally".
With today's technology more and more children are being diagnosed with a hearing loss up to the age of eighteen months old. This being such an early detection the child is able to go into speech therapy right away and have a greater chance of learning English. Some .
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children are not so lucky however. The ability to learn a language fluently ends when a child hits puberty. After that, it is incredibly hard for the child to acquire the language.
There are many deaf children who are born to hearing adults. This is incredibly hard for the children as well as he/her parents. "Most parents do not like to accept their child has a disability" (Keeny, Rodney) It is very hard for a parent to understand that their child is "different". "Only nine out of ten parents of deaf children actually learn sign language." (Keeny, Rodney) Because of this, there is not much parent/child communication in the household. Many parents try and find a special school for their child and often times it is a school that is out of town. The deaf child is sent to that school to live in a dormitory like setting, only coming home on some weekends and holidays.