Someone Twittered me a question: how do you handle staring and pointing when you have deaf kids? That is something I have not had to deal with, or do not remember having to deal with. If anyone stared and pointed at my own deaf kids when they were growing up, I maybe did not hear it or did not notice it because we may have been focused on our own communication. Or maybe it did happen, and we hardly noticed it or ignored it because for us, staring and pointing just went along with the territory of being deaf.
I suppose the way to handle it would be to explain to a deaf kid, "They are staring and pointing because"
- they are curious
- they have never seen a deaf person before
- they have never seen sign language before
- they have never heard a deaf person speak before
- they may simply just be rude
How have you handled staring and pointing at your deaf child? Do you have a better way to handle it than the above suggestions?
To the kid, explain that people are interested and curious about deaf people and the thing to do is be on their best behavior (not encouraging child to stranger contact by smiling or trying to explain.)
To others, “he’s deaf and smart” This kind of positive commentary can open the way to more questions or just lay groundwork for future reference. The “starers” might be key people in the community at some later time.
When somebody stares at me, I just smile and wave back. It often catches them off guard and they realize how rude they were. Or at the very least, it opens the possibility of starting a conversation.
I stick my tongue out!
And I teach my kids to do so, also.
It’s great to pretend we live in a happy world and every Deaf person is a missionary explaining to hearing people exactly how wonderful we are…
but to be honest, I just want to tell them to p*** off.
The first two comments are good ones. I’m not good at starers/pointers – I used to yell – why don’t you take a photo – it’ll last longer!!!
Staring, pointing is rude. Plain and simple and it annoys me. However, these days most don’t, and younger children will ask straight away so I always tell.