Interpretation

In a week, Ellis will begin his first experience having a personal ASL interpreter in a hearing setting. He will just barely five years old. He has been in great situations thus far. At school, he has full access to communication, because he goes to a Deaf school. At home, we do our best to also provide as full access as we can. And we, his parents, bridge the gap as best we can in other situations, such as extended family or church. We have been blessed to be surrounded by so many supportive people in our families and churches, they will often reach out to Ellis as best they can, as well.

Next week, though, our (former--but we still have a lot of connections) church is hosting its annual Vacation Bible School. Five mornings with fun, games, crafts, and Bible stories, verses, and lessons. I helped out last year, so we were going, whether Ellis liked it our not. And he did not. It was a little disheartening for me to see him pulling away. But it was totally inaccessible to him. The people around him did their best to help him feel comfortable, and we were around these people all the time, it wasn't like they were strangers or anything. But from Ellis's point of view, VBS was one big FAIL. And it really highlighted for us that it was seriously time to step it up in notch in providing Ellis access at church.

Fast forward to sometime this spring, the VBS director called me and said, "We want VBS to have a Deaf outreach component. What do you think?" I was floored! Wow!! That's awesome!!! But none of us had any idea what that would look like. We found an interpreter who attends and interprets at another church in our general vicinity. She had some ideas, but she thought if this was going to be a whole outreach component, we needed a lot more time. But she agreed to interpret for Ellis. And she has been fantastic in working with all of us to figure out how this is going to work. Especially since it'll be Ellis's first time having an interpreter.

Meanwhile, we've been working with him in a lot of area. Generally, encouraging him to seek clarification when he doesn't understand something or to ask for more information about a situation. Often he'll come up and ask me "what are doing?" now. We've also been trying to explain to him what it means to interpret.

We had a situation last night, when E was particularly wiggly during church--normally he does really well. So we took the opportunity to explain about what we're doing at church. (Really, this conversation could've happened in any context) And Daddy said (signed--the whole conversation is in ASL, really), "why am I signing?" and E shrugged. And I said, "we're signing because you're deaf. You can't hear. Mommy and Daddy can LISTEN-EARS so we listen to the talking, understand, and then sign, because you LISTEN-EYES. You're deaf. When you LISTEN-EYES, then you understand!" I don't know if being so perfunctory was the right thing. But I don't see any point in skirting around the issue. We're not presenting it like deaf is a bad thing. Just being more intentional about pointing out the differences in our family. And he needs to know why he has an interpreter, I think.

I'd appreciate any thoughts you, Deaf adults have.