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By: Mia Dutton
I'm sure we're all aware about the deaf community, or people who can't hear like you and me. Imagine loosing your hearing for life- you can't listen to music, TV, and other people. Exaggerated mouth movements are confusing, you have to actually see the mouth of the person talking, shouting is unreadable, group discussions are impossible, etc.
Without hearing, life is a lot harder, as a result these people are treated like children. Everyone seeing them as "that deaf kid" can really stick. When you are given a label, it really becomes real when you accept it, and it's harder to change it. This displays deaf people to think that they need to change, or try to get rid of their loss of hearing to be what they think is "normal".
Self consciousness can be a more common trait that some deaf people might posses, sometimes bringing them to be afraid of human interaction, because they're afraid that the person they are talking to might know them as "the deaf kid" before they actually get to know that them. It's easier them feel isolated. A majority deaf people wear a hearing aid to help them hear better, but that's only step one. With a hearing aid, you can hear the sounds that are made, but sometimes it's difficult to reciprocate.
Sometimes when people approach a deaf person, they tend to "over-help", not speaking normally, or even bringing up the fact that that person is deaf. Or saying something that might be offensive. That can make the deaf person feel uncomfortable, or embarrassed. Once, when I was younger (in a different state), I was in the car with my mom, and we were driving in a neighborhood, and I saw a yellow sign which read, "Deaf Community", indicating that that street was where deaf people lived. I was really confused. Why couldn't deaf people live where people who could hear lived?
As soon as people stop treating deaf people like their diseased, (which there're not) and start treating them like you would treat a non-deaf person, it just might help. Despite being able to hear, sometimes we can't listen to the the deaf community's universal plea for acceptance.