ODYSSEY - Empowering Parents and Caregivers: Supporting Families with ASL at Home - Intro

Oct 15, 2026

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文章面向听障或聋哑/重听儿童家庭，阐述父母与照护者学习美式手语（ASL）的必要性与现实障碍，并提出以家庭为中心的课程方案。作者指出传统班级在费用、门槛、严谨度与教学内容上难以匹配家长需求，尤其无法覆盖家庭日常交流场景。随后介绍“ASL at Home”课程的起源、在疫情背景下的共创过程，以及其通过语言赋能与知识支持，帮助家庭建立积极亲子联结的目标。

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Empowering Parents and Caregivers: Supporting Families with ASL at Home

How It Began

Looking Toward the Future

Leah C. Geer, PhD, is an associate professor and program coordinator for ASL & Deaf Studies at Sacramento State University in California. She researches effective ways for early intervention to support the families of deaf and hard of hearing children. Razi M. Zarchy, SLPD, CCC-SLP, worked as a deaf education early intervention speechlanguage pathologist for 12 years. Since completing his doctorate, he has left clinical work and is now a lecturer at Sacramento State University in California, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department. The authors welcome questions and comments about this article at [leah@aslathome.org](leah@aslathome.org)and[razi@aslathome.org](razi@aslathome.org), respectively. ODYSSEY Empowering Parents and Caregivers: Supporting Families with ASL at Home By Leah C. Geer and RaziM. Zarchy “… I only made it through 3 of 10 classes. I dropped out because I was so overwhelmed… I couldn’t keep up.” ~ Grandparent of a deaf child, who tried to learn ASL in a community education program We tell hearing parents that it is critical—and wonderful—to learn a signed language for their deaf or hard of hearing children, and parents report that classes in sign language are one of the most helpful ways to support their children’s languagelearning journey (Lieberman et al., 2022). While programs exist for families, unfortunately parents and other family members sometimes have a discouraging experience when they attend traditional classes in American Sign Language (ASL) . Families of deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, deafdisabled, and late-deafened children need a unique program—a program that is suited to the needs of adults and families (Snoddon, 2015). Several organizations and programs (e.g., American Society for Deaf Children, ASL Connect, Hands & Voices, Heritage Sign Languages Center, Oklahoma School for the Deaf ) offer ASL instruction, some of them without cost. This is important as the needs of parents, grandparents, and other family members are different from teenagers who take ASL in high school, or young adults who take ASL in college, or people who take ASL to become interpreters or teachers of the deaf. The needs of parents and family members of deaf and hard of hearing students are Photos courtesy of Alee and Nick Capps 2024 Left and above: Deaf and hard of hearing children benefit from their parents and other family members learning sign language. With full access to language in the home, understanding and learning increase and frustration decreases for all. unique. Not only do they face courses that are structured without regard for their needs, but they also endure other significant barriers. In-person ASL classes can be cost prohibitive and require expenses in addition to tuition, such as transportation, parking, and, for many families, childcare. The rigor of many courses, especially those at community colleges and universities, may be unsuitable. Further, courses designed for teenagers and young adults do not teach the vocabulary or address the communicative situations that families of young deaf and hard of hearing children face in everyday living. Most of these classes do not touch on other issues that are important to Caselli et al. (2021) found that children can have age-level vocabulary growth when parents start learning ASL by the time their deaf child is 6 months old. families, such as the importance of families feeling success in everyday interpersonal interactions that they have with their deaf children (e.g., Wittkowski et al., 2017) . Parents who choose to learn signs are sometimes bucking professionals. They may need affirmation as they take classes against the advice of experts who told them that signs would impede the development of their child’s speaking skills (Mauldin, 2016) . To combat all these barriers—the costs, rigor, programming, and need for affirmation—we wanted to develop a curriculum t

FAQs

为什么作者强调父母学习ASL对听障或重听孩子至关重要？

作者指出，学习手语能帮助家庭支持孩子的语言发展，并改善家庭内部的理解与学习过程，减少挫败感。

传统ASL课程存在哪些主要问题，导致部分家长难以坚持？

文中提到费用可能过高、还需承担交通停车等额外开支；课程强度与编排也可能不适合家长需求；此外内容往往面向青少年或大学人群，未覆盖家长在日常生活中的沟通词汇与情境。

“ASL at Home”课程如何形成并体现家庭为中心？

作者描述了在作者团队的经验与疫情期间线上学习需求推动下展开头脑风暴与课程开发，最终形成聚焦幼儿日常作息与家庭实际需求的“ASL at Home”。

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Miles