Speak Loud, Speak Proud - Learning to Advocate for You: Your Friends

By Lindsay Hutton

Speak Loud, Speak Proud

"When I made the choice to go to a hearing school at the beginning of high school, I had to convince a lot of people that it was a good idea," says Simon, a deaf first-year university student in Toronto. "My parents were nervous about it, my deaf friends at school felt like I wanted to ‘escape' or something… at the end of the day, I just wanted to try it."

Simon, who is profoundly deaf, but learned to lip read and speak enough to, as he says, "get around," entered a inner-city high school with a lot of trepidation. "At first, most of the kids kept a distance. No one was mean or anything, but the first couple of weeks were really lonely."

Unwilling to raise his white flag, Simon figured it was up to him to make the nervy first move to widen his paltry circle of friends at school. "I think I had these visions of being immediately welcomed with open arms like in some dumb movie," he laughs. "Then I realized, this is high school. Everyone feels like a freak. If I wanted friends, I had to go make them myself."

Truth be told, hearing loss and deafness shouldn't be an issue in our culture, but sometimes it is. We shouldn't have to worry about how our identity impacts the most basic social interactions, but sometimes we do. That said, most evidence points to the fact that to stay successful and feeling okay about ourselves and the world, it's important to have good, solid people around you. Not only for the good times, but also when you want to climb under your bed for a week.

Shock and Awe

Enza Iovio, an actor and a counselor with the CHS, attended deaf schools until university. At its outset, she felt that bold strategies to build buddied alliances were the only way to go. "I was always very open and upfront with meeting new people," she says. "I would go right up to a group of people and introduce myself. Because I'm deaf, it was a bit weird at first [for them]. But I think it wasn't that big of a deal because I didn't make it one. You learn to just deal with it."

Talk. Sign. Listen. Hear.

Piles of scholarly studies suggest that one of the biggest things that keeps deaf and hard-of-hearing youth best armed against alienation (i.e. feeling like crap about yourself) is to be able to communicate effectively and healthfully. Seriously - this is a big deal. This doesn't mean being able to speak and listen as a hearing person would, but to be able to effectively express your needs and feelings to others and vice versa.

Few people, whether they are deaf or not, arrive on the planet as experts in this kind of thing. The best practice for this is practice itself, but fortunately for us, just about every city in Canada has fantastic youth organizations for deaf and hard-of-hearing kids offering groups and programs to build these skills. Sure, this may sound a bit cheesy, but it's worth looking into. Drop an email to your local CHS chapter to point you in the right direction.

Forget the Haters

"99% of the people at my school are great," says Sara, a hard-of-hearing high-school student in London, ON. "But there have been one or two jerks who have made fun of me because of how I talk. When it first happened, it kind of freaked me out because I went to deaf schools before, so it obviously didn't happen there."

The solution? "I used to get really angry and upset and feel really crappy about it. One time, I almost got in a fight. But honestly, my friends were super-supportive and stuck up for me. I remember one saying ‘Seriously? That guy's obviously just a total dick!' And she's right: what kind of a person makes fun of someone who can't hear? It happens so rarely as I've gotten older; now I just ignore it."

Simon agrees: "My Mom always said the best policy in dealing with bullies is to just ignore them. I didn't use to think so, but it's totally true. They're a waste of time."

Friends and family can be great. However, sometimes as a deaf/HH person, it's best to get help from people who can speak our language and share similar experiences. Here's a list of some resources that might help.

Kids Help Phone - offers live advice and support from counselors both online and via telephone. This number is relay-friendly. 1-800-668-6868.

The Canadian Hearing Society - offers a multitude of services to deaf and HH people. They have several chapters nationwide, and can refer you to local youth-oriented services and organizations.