What’s Your Passion Project?
My four-year-old’s preschool class is having each child pick something that makes them happy. Then they create a poster about it (however and with whatever their heart desires) and share their passion with the class. Emma picked unicorns.
Her poster includes her amazing four-year-old handwriting (think second grader, thanks to being the 4th child at home) and unicorn drawings she made, unicorn pictures she colored, 3-D plastic mini-unicorns, unicorn stickers, and lastly added this morning, a photo of her sitting atop her super pink bed in her mega-girly bedroom she shares with her almost six sister, surrounded by stuffed unicorns, unicorn books, a unicorn piñata, unicorn toys and a GIANT “I love unicorns” smile.
I have been working on one of my passion projects, too, lobbying against proposed legislation that this year would be heard in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Senate Health And Education Committee, SB1741. This was the third year a similar bill was being introduced by LEAD-K, “Language Equality and Acquisition for Deaf Kids.”
LEAD-K and their bill sound like they should be embraced by all to support the deaf and hard of hearing community, but when you break down their bills, it is biased toward ASL and discriminatory against the broader deaf and hard of hearing spectrum of choices. The LEAD-K bills that have been proposed across the nation purposefully leave out families like ours that choose technology to give their child access to Listening and Spoken Language, or families that choose Cued Speech, Total Communication, Signed Exact English, etc. In fact, they leave out any family that speaks any other language besides English in their home!
Since being blessed with a deaf and hard of hearing daughter, I have a whole perspective of activism and have been able to learn and identify new things that make me passionate. I not only know much more about the folklore of unicorns thanks to Emma, but thanks to Charlotte, I am active in our law making process to ensure that the deaf and hard of hearing kids of today and tomorrow, don’t get stuck 30+ years ago when sign language was their best and really only option.
It’s the 21st century with technology exploding from our every seam. Having a bionic daughter with a cochlear implant and hearing aid is in some way “normal” today. Charlotte wearing stuff on her head basically just looks like any other kids out there rocking their Beats By Dre or iPhone earphones.
EXCEPT - this technology on my daughter’s head and under her scalp, woven through her cochlea and connecting synapse to her brain give her the missing 5th sense her body lacked at birth. TRULY AMAZING!
You can read what’s happening with SB1741 here, but first have to share how Charlotte expressed herself last Friday at her “Show and Share.”
Charlotte came home the Wednesday before and told me excitedly that the “theme” for the week was MAGNETS! She said she wanted to share her special ears with her class. There’s no way I was going to miss this opportunity to support my brave girl.
I took an awesome video of her showing her cochlear magnet to her classmates, but since I included other kids, I am unable to share it (school policy). That said, she spoke beautifully, told her peers how she was born deaf and learned to listen and that some kids use their hands to speak to one another instead of their ears and voices.
Pretty damned cool. Go Char!
Lotsa love,
Leah
