Hearing children of deaf parents – a new social work client group?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article presents the initial results from empirical research targeting the life experience of healthy children living with their deaf parents in the period of their dependency. A healthy child of parents with hearing difficulties grows up naturally bilingual and this is what places the child into the position of a native interpreter for the parents. This special situation is primarily determined by the culture and language of people with hearing difficulties and by the information barriers which stand between the deaf people and their social milieu. The qualitative design with a semi-structured interview was chosen for the empirical research. The goal was to determine the personal experience of the respondents with the attributed social role of the native interpreters into sign language during their childhood. The empirical research resulted in some extremely interesting issues, for example, how an inappropriate form of burden which is placed on a child’s shoulders by the parents and formal institutions can be connected with the form of the parents’ education. This article also formulates issues of possible ways of supporting families with deaf parents and healthy children in the process of solving the problems named above.