Sharing Music

Miss Kat's favorite thing these days is YouTube. She listens to music on her phone NONSTOP. She loves looking up music and she especially loves lyric videos. Whenever we are driving together she asks if we can share music with each other. She will play me one of her favorite songs and then she looks up one of mine. It is really fun to share like that. It is certainly not something that I ever thought I would be able to do with my profoundly deaf daughter.

I am speaking at the national AG Bell conference this year. I am sharing our family's story so I have been reviewing my blog a lot. It has been amazing to walk back through my thoughts and emotions across the last 13 years. It has been a long journey, with many twists and turns, and we certainly are in a different place than I imagined all those years ago when we began investigating a CI for Miss Kat.

I believed that she would need ASL as her language of communication and instruction her entire life- I was wrong. I believed that all deaf children should sign from the start- I was wrong. I believed that Miss Kat would need specialized instruction for her entire school career- I was wrong. I believed that "oral parents" and "signing parents" had a fundamental difference- I was wrong. I believed that ASL was the only language that was accessible to children with hearing loss- I was wrong. I have learned and changed so much and so has Miss Kat. I am so proud of her and her accomplishments. She is growing up to be an amazing young woman who happens to be deaf.