Last week, I drove down to St. Louis to join the Hands & Voices gang at the EHDI Conference. It had been several years since I attended an EHDI conference and because I work in early intervention as a Deaf Mentor, I have a heart for this topic. I’m one of three mentors in Illinois and one of the first trained groups. The first child I worked with is now thirteen.
When I attended my first EHDI conference in it’s infancy, I was only one of a few Deaf and Hard of Hearing participants at that time. At this conference, wow! Everywhere I went, I met up with old and new friends. The conference has truly grown from the early days and the grand ballroom held around 1,000 people for Hands & Voices board member Christine Yoshinaga-Itano’s keynote opening presentation.
At Hands & Voices, one of our most requested presentations is Supporting Families Without Bias. We put together a Part II of this presentation that goes even deeper into the topic. When I first founded the Illinois Hands & Voices chapter back in 2003, I was often thrown in to “this camp” or “that camp” based on how I communicated or how low the lines were on my audiogram. Eventually, more and more people embraced the spirit of Hands & Voices and began to understand my passion for our mission, “What works for your child is what makes the choice right.” What I’m most grateful for during my years with Hands & Voices is that I’ve met so many wonderful families from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. My kids have grown up with kids who cue/speak/sign/combine/whatever works and they’ve made some lifelong friends.
At the EHDI conference, I had the pleasure of sitting down to lunch with Henry Kisor and his wife, Debby. Henry and I met several years back when he was working at the Chicago Sun-Times as a book editor. I first discovered Henry when I read his memoir, What’s That Pig Outdoors and I enjoyed his frank outlook on life. I interviewed him for the Hands & Voices Communicator: Henry Kisor, Mystery Author Unveiled. I like to hang around Henry because he tells me nice stuff like, “You’re a natural writer.” I would have lunch with him every week if I could.
During the last night of the conference, Hands & Voices hosted a dinner for everyone involved in state chapters. When I first joined the board of Hands & Voices, there were just four chapters. We sat around a table and pondered simply how we could share our mission with others. Today, we have expanded worldwide and nearly every state has a chapter.
Back at my first EHDI meeting, we all fit around a single table during our Hands & Voices dinner. At our dinner last week, we had 75 of us seated around several tables. As I worked my way around the room taking pictures and meeting new people, I took a few minutes to talk to a two-and-half year old boy sitting at a table with his father. The father and I talked about how his family became involved with Hands & Voices. The little one and I talked about the noodles he was devouring on his plate.
And that’s what keeps me going year after year– the little ones.