That’s really the most challenging question in this whole scenario.
I have often tried to put myself in the shoes of a parent...
...who has just had a deaf child, and who is presented with these two options.
You can go with spoken language, and we won’t sign...
...and we will use all the technology and the knowledge that we know, to help your child become a speaker.
Or sign language, which comes with a culture which is often completely foreign to the parent...
...and a language that is completely foreign to a parent that they would have to learn as an L2.
And I think it is instructive to remember, to do this exercise of putting yourself in the parents’ shoes...
...because as a researcher, we see so clearly the evidence in favour of signing early with your child.
We see so clearly the dangers of not signing with your child...
...that children who have had late exposure to language have had to suffer.
And for us it’s black and white, and there is very little question.
This is what you should do: you should sign with your child.
But putting myself… doing that exercise, and putting myself in the shoes of a parent...
...that gives me a lot of pause, because I understand how daunting it must be...
...to be faced with learning a second language, and we know how famously bad adults are...
...at learning a second language of any sort, let alone sign language.
And also the fact that you would be raising your child in a culture that’s not your own.
And I think that’s a very unnatural thing for parents to consider...
...because we all assume that we raise our children in our culture, the same culture that we came from...
...and there’s that connection between our children and ourselves.
But when they grow up, using primarily a language that is not my language...
...then that is a very big cultural difference.
I think that the biggest resource for the parent who has decided to choose the sign language route...
...for their children, would probably be the schools and the deaf community.
People who already have this language as theirs, and who can serve as the best models of that language for their child.
But I don’t think that that means that the parents shouldn’t…
I don’t think that that means that there is not a reason for the parents to learn the language.
I think that being able to sign while it’s very daunting to look at from a second language perspective...
...that’s an area of research that’s been growing a lot in recent years.
People are finally taking interest in studying the question of how a hearing person...
...who has no sign language experience, how they come to learn the sign language.
And it turns out that you’re not coming as… New learners of sign language who come from a hearing background, don’t come armed with nothing.
They actually have quite a lot of resources at their disposal...
.that the curriculum that we currently have, maybe is not so good at maximising or exploiting.
So research that’s happening in this area is trying to identify what kinds of intuitions and knowledge...
...hearing people, who gesture, and who are visual people also, what kinds of intuitions they already have.
They can be moulded to the service of sign languages, or they can be ...
...applied very quickly to sign languages and get them that much further ahead, a jump further ahead.
And I’m very optimistic of this kind of research, I’m involved in this kind of research myself.
So I’m very optimistic, and I hope that we will soon be learning more about how hearing people learn...
...and how to optimize their learning, so that they can become more effective models for their children.
And you can’t say enough about how wonderful it is to have the same language as your child...
...or at least be conversant in the same language, for parental bonding with your child...
...for communication, for just keeping those important lines of communication open with your child.
So I think that, just for that reason alone, it’s worth the trouble for parents to jump into ...
...this new and unknown language, and try to learn it.
But I also want to assure them that as researchers we’re aware of the fact that this is a very understudied area.
And that there’s a very urgent need for parents to learn a new sign language very quickly...
...and it’s something that more and more people are taking note of now.
And I’m very optimistic that we will know more in the near future...
...about how to make that process less painful than it is right now.