What to say to a deaf person whose child passed away?

I'm sure that those in the deaf and hard of hearing community will at one time or another will experience this scenario when you know of a deaf/hh person who lost his/her child and will not know how to respond.

In Deafreedom discussion forum there is this independent thinking, firebrand of a gal who is deaf where I have met her personally (along with my wife and kids) a few years back had this great little story about how she was approached by a stranger over the lost her of her adult daughter.

A lot of people don't know what to say when someone has lost a child. I have a golden opportunity to TELL you...here. I hope you never need this advice but if you do...here you go.

I have only met one person that knew what to say and he was a complete stranger at Wal-Mart. My eye doctor. I am talking about everyday people. All my R/L friends save two vanished.

Here is what he said.

He was making general conversation and of course the "how many children do you have" question came up. I cringe every time but I am getting better. Cringing is okay. I said I have two children, my son Andrew who is 28 and my daughter Nicole who would have been 35 but she passed away in June. Silence. Now this is when I usually get shunned. I hear "I'm sorry" and never hear another word.

That is the wrong thing to do. WRONG.

He apparently thought for a minute or two...I had already gone into my usual retreat mode. Then he said "What did she do? What was her name? Did she have kids, was she married? Did she have pets?" The questions kept coming....at first I was startled, and yes slightly off-balanced because it was unusual to have someone talk to me about Nicole. As I answered the questions I realized something...I missed talking about both of my children. I had lost the "right" to talk about my children and most parents take pride in talking about their kids, their grandkids, etc... and when you disclose your child has passed away you lose the ability to share their life with the world.

Read the rest of her post in Deafreedom. What Sherry gave was an invaluable insight to all this. I'm the type of person who would rather not bring up the topic of somebody's death or even tell the person how sorry I am for their lost. It would seem......too personal to do so..... and feel that it'd be an invasion of somebody's own solitude and grieving period. But I've never thought of approaching it from the viewpoint on expressing an interest about a person's own child who passed away versus saying "I'm sorry. "

Alldeaf - the prejudice factor

This is my third and final installment of the "factor series" (see previous ones here and here) where prejudicial feelings are used as a justification to go after people whose political views or opinions that do not line up with their supposedly prevailing attitudes. In short, acting out of sheer deaf madness in moments of temporary insanity. But read on further and I'm sure you'll get a big laugh out of this one!

Here it goes.

Not too long ago I got a ban notice saying that my ban would last 4 days but it ended up lasting only one day (they owe me 1 day of no access!) after a moderator (who doesn't like me for my political beliefs and opinions, a fact) realized the folly of banning me over something that was really funny in the first place. Right then and there I knew it was all about the person's own political feelings getting hurt and nothing about keeping things "neutral" (if there is such a thing in AD) while as a moderator.

Here's my cropped banned letter with the original reason why I was banned just to save space.



This was the result of me putting a picture of a cat dressed up as an al-Qaeda suicide bomber in the jokes section. Yuk yuk. Only this person didn't have any sense of humor, obviously. The ban only lasted less than 24 hours which I'm sure others higher up had to convince this person just how stupid it was and and how transparent the actions were by going after me so quickly, and without thinking, too.

Here's the "offensive" picture that I posted along with some notes.

Finished laughing?

Then came *TWO* reasons explaining why I was banned for putting an "offensive" picture of a suicide bomber cat in the Jokes and Funny Stories section. But in less than 24 hours the 4-day ban was rescinded and I got this PM letter. This person asked why I put the picture up. I responded,

"Because it was funny. Live a little."

Still laughing?

I'm not done.

Two weeks earlier (I didn't even know the same suicide cat bomber picture was posted there, too!) the same suicide cat bomber picture was found in the pets section of AD. Go to this link here and you'll see it before your very own eyes. Don't worry. I made a screen capture and an html copy of it just in case. See what the commenter said below about the 72-virgins post -picture joke? Shouldn't that comment be "offensive," too? And what about the suicide bomber cat picture? Is it that offensive? How come that poster never got banned? Do you see anybody in that thread howling with outrage?

But really, the first time I saw that picture it was in Deafreedom. I thought it was hilarious and so I copied and pasted it in AD in the jokes section. As I found out, laughingly so, somebody certainly didn't find the picture amusing. But this whole "banning thing" was a complete joke in of itself worthy to have it's own jokes section.

This wank, S*blesc**t, (in a forum that claim to be politically neutral, hah!) seriously needs to address his own personal issues against me and leave the proper and professional moderating duties to those who know how to do them correctly.

Alldeaf - the censorship factor?

I've heard about it but didn't think much of it until I sent a Private Message (PM) to another Alldeaf member. And then I saw it. The returned PM message back to me I noticed the one word I used. I was replaced with a long ugly line of asterisks instead. My original message out got censored! How could this be? And then I tried at first a short list of words (see screen capture) to see what would happen. All done in the name of research only involving our privacy.

After that quick experiment I tried a long list of words based on discussions with a few people. Several of words in the list ended up as "flagged" words and were replaced with asterisks. Incredible!


CLICK HERE FOR LARGER VERSION.


Now, see how petty for Alldeaf to censor Deafreedom, Deafsummit, Deafmadness (currently inactive but you can see the archived part), and Deafparent (no longer active but you can see the archived part).

There is no justification to do this sort of invasion of privacy on a regular basis. Even under a "spamming rule" it doesn't apply to PMs having a friendly conversation mentioning another deaf run forum site. If the receiver of PM messages feels that he or she has a spammed PM then simply forward the offending PM to one of the moderator and ask for help there. Censoring other people's Private Message is good way to ruin their trust. How many other unknown flagged words are there in AD's list of "offending" and "offensive" words are there? No one knows except the moderators.

Here's an interesting question. How come only four forums were censored but not the other three such as Deafchat ("temporarily closed" like...for long time but you can see the archived section), Deafonline2 (or Deafonline), and Deafnotes? Well? Oh, fer crying out loud, don't give me the spamming justification when one can forward the offending PM to the proper moderator who can easily address that rather than resort to flagging "questionable" words in the first place. Typing in the word n***er and seeing it get censored on the receiving end in a PRIVATE message (PM) isn't about spamming, is it? No. But an outright invasion of AD members' privacy, no matter how vulgar the PM might be between two consenting adults.

As I continue to learn about other deaf run forums and what moderators have done in the past I found out that at least one member was banned when one of the moderators actually used that member's PM (flagged words or otherwise) and subsequently banned him/her based on what was said in his/her PMs. A fact or a bit of truth stretched some? How much power do these moderators have anyways regarding PMs? I know that PMs cannot be read by a 2nd party unless they know the password but what do I know? How people got banned because of their PMs with the flagged words were justification in banning that member? I don't know but I suspect that was back during the earlier days when many forums were up and running and competition was fierce to retain members. But regardless of what happened in the past there shouldn't be any excuse to remotely censor words for fear of spamming. Time to grow up and be more responsible and conscious on the privacy issue. As Dale said, who is the owner and moderator of Deafreedom, about PM,

Anyway, PM's and Emails are sacred around here, I wouldn't read 'em.

And, no, I'm not trying to advertise Dale's Deafreedom site but to show a voice of reason, common sense and sanity knowing what's right and wrong when it comes to privacy issues and moderating. Invading members' PMs is good way to lose their trusts.

Remember, this is a Private Email. "P" means private. Not censorship. Or looky loos into emails. Things like that. It's either a private message or not. Otherwise it'd be an Orwellian or Big Brother thing going under your radar without knowing exactly what are moderators are doing in those forums behind that screen of theirs. Have they peeked in the past? I wonder. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Stay tuned, I have more including wacky excuses for person to be banned or why messages were censored. Politically motivated or just a bad moderator?