For twins, parents, signs of the times

From: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, FL - Aug 4, 2003

By Nicole Sterghos
Brochu Staff Writer

Ashley and Amanda Smith have always gotten attention for sharing a birthday after having shared the womb.

But even more than for their lives as twins, the Boca Raton girls have begun fielding questions for another aspect that sets them apart, one they never thought much about -- their deaf parents.

In the process, they have discovered a purpose of sorts: to help those around them understand the unhearing world and to take into consideration the needs of a silent population.

No small task for a couple of 7-year-olds.

So, their ambassadorship has begun with baby steps.

When the music teacher at Del Prado Elementary asked the class before the end of last school year how they could improve their goodbye song, Ashley suggested they sign some of the words.

When friends asked how the giggly twins communicate with their parents, the girls started teaching their friends sign language and demonstrating how to clearly enunciate their words for lip-readers.

"It's fun to learn new things," Amanda said.

Until recently, Todd and Karen Smith's outgoing girls never thought of sign language as anything unusual or considered their parents different from their friends' folks. Then a schoolmate asked Ashley what it was like living with a mother and father who are deaf.

"I said, 'It's pretty hard because sometimes when we're trying to ask for something, they can't hear you, so you have to go over and tap them,'" Ashley said.

Or -- worst of all -- they have to repeat themselves.

"It's so boring to say it twice," said Amanda.

But the girls also feel some sense of importance as the only hearing people in a house where lights are rigged to flash when the telephone or the doorbell rings and where the bed in the master bedroom vibrates when the alarm goes off in the morning.And now that they're older, their parents are relying on them more and more to answer the phone or interpret for them when people speak too fast.

"They're a big help," Karen Smith said.

Such a role is typical for hearing children of deaf parents, who become so used to communicating for their parents they often grow into careers as deaf interpreters or otherwise support the unhearing community, said Dale Dyal, assistant coordinator of interpreting services at California State University at Northridge.

Such children, Dyal said, also are known to grow up more quickly than their peers.

"You had to [grow up early], because you had to really think and understand what's going on around you," said Dyal, who interpreted television shows and telephone conversations for his deaf parents long before closed-captioning and TTY phone services.

The Smiths, though, pride themselves on their self-sufficiency. Todd Smith, a lab technician for American Boarts Crushing in Boca Raton, and Karen Smith, a stay-at-home mom, don't consider themselves different.

Both 38, they were born deaf when their mothers contracted German measles early in their pregnancies. They attended mainstream schools, have hearing parents and siblings, and have spoken from an early age with hearing aids that help them recognize the tone and vibration of their voices.

They are profoundly deaf but proficient at lip-reading and taught their girls sign language before they learned to walk.

"I don't think of myself as handicapped," Karen Smith said. "Some people think that, but I don't."

And rather than holding their children back developmentally, the Smiths' deafness has helped the girls excel beyond their peers, Karen Smith's parents said.

"We were concerned in the beginning because we expected the girls to talk in that same monotone voice that Karen and Todd do, but they don't," Peter Gothers, Karen Smith's father, said of his grandchildren. "They speak very clearly."

Both twins spoke their first words -- "mama" for Amanda, "dada" for Ashley -- at 9 months and learned to sign such words as "up" (both thumbs in the air) and milk (squeezing one hand into a fist, as if pulling on a cow's udder) by 14 months.

Research shows that children who learn sign language early develop speech, spelling and reading skills faster and score higher on intelligence tests.

As first-graders last year, the twins were scoring at a fourth-grade level on reading tests, and at the age of 2, they were able to tell cooing admirers at the mall that they were fraternal, not identical, twins, said Janet Gothers, Karen Smith's mother.

Karen Smith is proud of her girls and said she enjoys the time she spends with them, so much so that she thinks her deafness has kept her from some of the special moments in their lives. The little joke that made them roll into laughing fits. The songs they sing in the back of the car on the way to school.

She's thinking of getting cochlear implants and joining the hearing world of her growing girls.

"I tell myself that maybe it would be better for me to understand them better," Karen Smith said, signing the words for emphasis. "I miss out on so much."

© 2003 South Florida Sun-Sentinel