Hello my name is Marcia Hutton and I am the hearing impaired mother of three beautiful girls who are not hearing impaired - Raeanne, Gabrielle and Anna-Leisa. The eldest, Raeanne knows sign language the best and the other two are still learning. Raeanne started to learn sign language before she could speak, and as she learnt to speak, she also continued to learn sign language. There were times when she did not know how to say certain things so she would sign it for me. Being a hearing impaired parent is not difficult because I have the support of my husband who is also hearing impaired and I have the help of my children who translate for the two of us whenever we need them to.

I think that the biggest challenge of being hearing impaired is whenever I am at my workplace or any place without my kids, I miss out on a lot because no one knows sign language. Even though I can speak, my English is not perfect. In conversing with others, I would very often read their lips to know what they are saying, providing of course they do not speak too quickly and they enunciate their words.

I got the practice of reading lips from my parents and siblings who barely did any sign language. I have two brothers and two sisters, and only my youngest sister learnt a little sing language. So when they spoke to me, they would be quite articulate and I would read their lips. The same applied to my parents as well. So thanks to them I can read lips.

You are probably wondering if was born hearing impaired – well the answer is no. I became hearing impaired due to a wrong prescription given to me by a drunk doctor. When I was about three months old I fell ill and got a high fever.  My mom rushed me to the doctor who gave her medicine for me. She took me home and started the treatment, but after three days I still had the fever so she carried me to another doctor who prescribed the same medicine but different dosage. My parents didn’t know that my hearing was affected until I was about one year old.  My dad was trying to teach me how to speak and he was not getting any response from me. He clapped by both of my ears and I didn’t budge.  From that day forward, they knew that I was hearing impaired, and found out that it was because of the wrong prescription given when I had the fever.

While it may be challenging at times, I do not regret being hearing impaired because I have God who is always there for me, my family who continue to support me, and both hearing and hearing impaired friends, and that is all that I need really.

Again, I thank you for visiting my site. I hope that my little sharing of my life’s story stimulates some interest in you to want to learn more about the hearing impaired and sign language. In the not too distant future, I hope to create a few video presentations on sign language.  My eldest daughter will be the instructor.  That promises to be quite interesting.  So please bookmark this site. Bye for now.