A Deaf Mom Shares Her World » 2008

"Beautiful" Video is Indeed, Beautiful

D-Pan has released a new video based on Christina Aguilera’s song, “Beautiful.” Kylie Sharp, the co-director of Michigan Hands & Voices has a daughter in the video–check out the girl in the pink:

The lyrics for the original song:

Don’t look at me

Every day is so wonderful
And suddenly, it’s hard to breathe
Now and then, I get insecure
From all the pain, I’m so ashamed

I am beautiful no matter what they say
Words can’t bring me down
I am beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring me down
Oh no, so don’t you bring me down today

To all your friends, you’re delirious
So consumed in all your doom
Trying hard to fill the emptiness
The pieces is gone left the puzzle undone
Is that the way it is

You are beautiful no matter what they say
Words can’t bring you down, oh no
You are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring you down, oh no
So don’t you bring me down today

No matter what we do
(no matter what we do)
No matter what they say
(no matter what they say)
We’re the song inside the tune full of beautiful mistakes

And everywhere we go
(everywhere we go)
The will always shine
(sun will always shine)
But tomorrow we might awake
On the other side

We are beautiful no matter what they say
Yes, words won’t bring us down, oh no
We are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring us down, oh no
So don’t you bring me down today

Don’t you bring me down today
Don’t you bring me down today

And finally, you can view Christina Aguilera’s original video with subtitles:

Beautiful

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Swimmer Aims for the Deaf Olympics

Karen Meyer at ABC News Chicago did a segment this morning on deaf swimmer, Will Landgren: Deaf Swimmer’s Teammates Learn Sign Language.

When Will first began swimming, his teammates wore sweatshirts to welcome him to the team. When Will’s cochlear implant comes off and he slips into the water, his teammates communicate with him by signing or through an interpreter. To me, that’s what inclusion is truly about– recognizing the barriers to communication and using a two-way street to get around them.

When I was on the swim team in high school, I always had a teammate or two who would relay what the coach was saying because without my glasses, I couldn’t see well at all, much less hear. At swim meets, the coach always lined me up near the starting gun so I could see the flash of the gun. A strobe light would have truly been appreciated back then!

Matthew Gets an Implant–Six Months Later

“How’s Matthew doing?” a reader recently asked me. You may remember Matthew from earlier posts: Matthew Gets a Cochlear Implant and Matthew’s Cochlear Implant Activation. I have gotten several emails from readers wondering about Matthew’s progress with his cochlear implant and what he’s doing today.

From the very first day of activation, Matthew instantly took a liking to the sounds he was hearing through the implant. It took a while to get used to the sound, but his brain learned to adjust and the sounds became clearer over time. Keep in mind, Matthew has Auditory Neuropathy and had many moments when he could hear normally when he was a young child. During the last several years, Matthew had great difficulty having conversations with people who didn’t sign and was struggling to pay attention in school.

The summer before Matthew obtained his cochlear implant, he attended a sports camp at the Illinois School for the Deaf. He told Sue, his mom, “I want to go to school down there.” Sue couldn’t imagine sending Matthew away to a residental school. In fact, just two years before that, Sue sat on a panel with other parents and declared that she would never send her kids to a residential school. “I want my kids at home with me,” she said.

So it may surprise some readers to learn that Matthew and his brother have been attending ISD since January, 2008.

Matthew took an instant liking to his new school and it was easy to see that he was very happy there. I asked him how ISD was different from the school he attended at home with a handful of deaf and hard of hearing students and he said, “At my old school, I didn’t participate much. I felt left out of a lot of conversations, like I wasn’t even here. At ISD, everyone signs and I participate in everything. I’m involved in a lot of activities. I’m on the track team. I have lots of friends at ISD. We go bowling and play video games.”

Sue explained that Matthew receives auditory training each week to practice listening with his implant. Matthew described the sessions as fun and enjoyable. He is in sixth grade and is being challenged with seventh grade work.

“It sounds like ISD has changed your life,” I remarked to Matthew.

“Yes, it has, but so has my implant,” he said with a huge grin.

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