One summer in the mid-70s my parents had this idea that I should go to a deaf summer camp. So I went off to Camp Kirby in Pennsylvania, accompanied by another boy whose parents also thought their son would benefit from being with other deaf kids.
Great idea, except for one not-so-minor detail: Both the boy and I were pure oral in our communication, and this was a DEAF camp with all the kids using sign language! At the time, we did not even know the sign alphabet.
So what happened that summer? I was teased by the deaf kids, and the other boy had just as hard if not harder, a time. I focused on learning how to swim so I could pass the Red Cross swim test. One morning the counselor teaching me how to swim asked me, "Jamie, why does [other boy] cry so much?" I knew why he was crying - he was homesick and lonely because he could not communicate with the other deaf kids!
Thus, I learned the hard way that some deaf kids could treat other deaf kids the same way hearing kids treated deaf kids - by leaving them out, by making fun of them, and by playing cruel jokes on them. In fact, one thing that the deaf kids did to me at Camp Kirby was just as cruel as anything any hearing kid ever did. I was on the toilet and did not know that a group of girls had locked the door. When I finished my business, I found I could not get out of the toilet stall! For about an hour, I was locked in, pounding on the door for help. Of course no one heard me. Finally, one girl let me out.
I blocked that experience out of my memory for years. It came back to me many years later in college when I met another deaf girl. One of the first things that girl said to me was, "I remember you! I freed you from that locked bathroom stall at Camp Kirby!" The shock of the memory coming back was so painful I ran out of the dorm room because I didn't want her to see me cry - an ex-boyfriend was in the room too and I didn't want him to see me cry either.
Unless a deaf kid who signs can talk and an oral deaf kid can sign, how can there be communication between the two groups? There is an entire pool of oral deaf and hard of hearing kids around here, yet my son can not play with them just as I was unable to communicate with the kids at Camp Kirby. One time, we arranged a play date for him with a hard of hearing kid, and they were unable to communicate with each other. Needless to say, they never played together again.
