I was 13 years old. I asked my 13 year old friend Karl why my 14 year old friend Claire was avoiding me. I liked Claire. She was the only girl I knew who could play keepy up better than the boys. She could juggle the ball on her feet and knees over 500 times. She made it look easy. Suddenly she was avoiding me and my mate said it was because – “She thinks you wanna f**k her”

I literally had no idea what he was talking about. I had been profoundly deaf since I was eight or nine years old. I certainly knew the word “F**K”, it was a swear word. You could f**k off. You couldn’t be f**ked. It was f**king awesome and so on. To me it was just a bad word like bloody, and bugger and shit. But I quite honestly had no idea that it could be used as a verb meaning to copulate, hide the sausage and just have plain old SEX!

You know what this means? It means that I am one of the millions of young deaf people the world over that has been a victim of language deprivation. Yes me! Me, the university graduate. Yes, me the writer of The Rebuttal. Yes, me the well known and experienced disability advocate. I am a victim of language deprivation!

Now most definitions of language deprivation focus on the deaf child’s early language acquisition years. This is between the ages of 1 and 5. It is said that language deprivation is the result of the lack of language stimuli in these crucial language acquisition years. So a deaf child who is unable to hear misses out on language access, which can lead to them becoming language deprived.

However, my own personal definition is that language acquisition is ongoing. You learn it through overhearing. Through overhearing you learn new vocabulary and new sophisticated ways to use language. This happens through hearing others in completely random and natural discussions. Language acquisition occurs through interaction, overhearing conversations, access to information on the radio and TV and so on. This huge communication cycle contributes to us developing language continuously.

In my case I had access to language in the early critical years. I acquired the basics of grammar and developed a quite extensive vocabulary. Then at age 8 this access suddenly stopped and was hindered. This meant my ongoing sophisticated language and conceptual development was impacted. Hence my lack of knowledge of the word F**K and its nuances.

Let’s imagine a group of young people chatting in a group at lunch time. Perhaps Betty caught her big brother in the act last night. The kids are discussing this and using all sorts of language and words to describe what Betty saw. I don’t need to share the words here, it would range from biological to completely lewd.

Then Tony shares a story of what he heard when his sister brought her boyfriend home and snuck into her bedroom. Sally describes what she heard on the radio about sexually transmitted diseases – just because its relevant. Everyone is sharing. learning and developing new vocabulary from the discussions in the group. They are also being exposed to new concepts and experiences.

Of course these discussions are not limited to sex but our teenage years are generally when we begin to explore sex and intimate relationships in more detail. These “group” discussions also will explore what was taught in the classroom and students further their learning through each other. They would discuss world events and ideologies. Through our peers we explore complex issues and concepts. This contributes to our development and maturity.

But not me, as a teenager I missed most of this peer learning. I was at a mainstream school. I was part of peer groups but not really participating because I could not hear what was going on. The consequence of this? Not being exposed to new vocabulary. Not hearing discussions about sexual intercourse and the the words associated with it. It is not just dirty talk that I missed, it was also exposure to age appropriate talk about relationships and more mature concepts such as political ideologies.

I was certainly part of the group. I sat with the group with my football waiting for someone to come play on the oval. These group chats were boring simply because I had no access to them. I would rather play football.

I suspect that hearing kids tolerated me and thought of me as a bit of a drag. If I did speak it was probably about sport and something completely unrelated to what the group were talking about.

In my teenage years I simply lacked the language, conceptual and social development that comes with everyday interaction and communication. The consequence of this was that I was unable to develop those age-appropriate social relationships and closer intimate relationships that teenagers do. Looking back, puberty was a lonely and confusing time.

What I am describing here is the impact of language deprivation in later years. The more academic among us will say that I had language and I was later able to fill in the missing pieces. They will say that what I am describing does not really fit the proper definition of language deprivation. I accept that this is true, but the impact of lack of access to more sophisticated language and concepts in my later childhood years had a profound impact on my maturity.

The isolation that I experienced, the lack of age appropriate social experiences, the confusion and the anxiety that resulted were very real. All of it related to a lack access to communication and and age appropriate language development. It meant that through adolescence I struggled socially and my self esteem was shot.

I don’t write this to garner sympathy, I write it to show that language deprivation and any barrier to continuous language development can have profound consequences. We have a society today that focuses on “hearing” and providing the tools to hear. In doing so we create an environment that is impeding the education and social development of many young deaf people.

How many times have we heard about deaf kids that “They are doing well ..“. But really, just how well are these deaf kids doing? How much better could they do with more focus on their inclusion, more access to environmental chatter, more access to social interaction? – And I mean proper access, not just bits and pieces.

Oliver Sacks in his book, Seeing Voices, said this, “A human being is not mindless or mentally deficient without language, but he is severely restricted in the range of his thoughts, confined, in effect, to an immediate, small world.” I know that I was. I know that even kids with cochlear implants experience at school and home what I experienced every day. Our education system and support systems need to acknowledge this.

“Doing well...” Is not enough. Deaf kids need to thrive. They need tools to access the rich discussions and information that are around them throughout the day. It’s through this access that they thrive, achieve and become functioning human beings. For this reason we need to properly look at what INCLUSION really means for deaf kids. It is not just BEING THERE! I hope from this article the reader can see that it is infinitely more complex than that.

What’s the result of language deprivation in a deaf persons later years? Well according to Wyatte C.Hall, in his paper published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal in 2017, the resuts are “… cognitive delays, mental health difficulties, lower quality of life, higher trauma, and limited health literacy.”

Well F**K! Perhaps it’s long past time that we did something about it!