Motherlode: Teaching a Deaf Child Her Mother's Tongue

Originally Published: MAY 8, 2012 3:22 PM, The New York Times

Most babies are born into the culture and community of their families. If the family is Latino or Tatar or Han Chinese, so is the baby. The baby learns the family’s language — “the mother tongue.” Culture and language are passed down from parents to child.

Except when the child is born deaf. I am the mother of two daughters, both diagnosed deaf within their first weeks of life. My husband and I, both hearing, faced complicated decisions from the very start. Our babies needed exposure to language immediately (unlike hearing babies, they heard nothing in the womb), and we needed to make choices.

Most parents simply whisper and coo to their children in their native tongues. We had to decide — and quickly — what our daughters’ native tongue would be. Should we try to get our daughters access to spoken language through hearing technology, or to immerse them (and ourselves) in American Sign Language, or to try to do both?