Surrounded by the joyous laughter and eager voices of the children she led during the deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) Southern California Family Camp, Lillian Wong (10) felt herself smiling until her cheeks ached at the immense kindness and positivity that was spread by each and every attendee, May 30. Over Memorial Day weekend, Wong attended the camp in Julian as a counselor for 48 families that have family members who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
Wong said that the main goal of the camp is to let the families know that they have a voice and that they aren’t alone in their struggles.
“The big focus was for the kids to just have fun and feel seen and welcomed,” Wong said. “For the parents, especially for those who were learning ASL for their kids or who are new to the camp, it was really important that they have the resources to help their kids and understand what they’re going through. A lot of the parents did have young kids who were deaf or were hard-of-hearing and were learning ASL as their primary language, but many shared that they were struggling with communicating with their kids. I think that a big part of the camp was helping them through that.”
As a first-time counselor, Wong worked with the younger kids, guiding them through activities and games. She said that making people feel seen and supported was an important part of her experience at the camp.
“Half of [the kids] used sign language, and the other half used a mix of sign language and spoken language, so it was really interesting to see how they perceive the world and process things differently,” Wong said. “I started to learn the best ways to communicate with them and support them and care for them, and it really opened my eyes to how I can be there for others and really just make people feel welcome and supported, which I think is really important and a big intention of the camp.”
Wong said the DHH camp challenged her abilities to communicate with the people through signing.
“I’m still learning a lot of ASL, and fully immersing myself in that scene teaches you a lot very quickly, and you start to understand a new perspective,” Wong said. “It was definitely hard sometimes because actively translating in my head and thinking about how to sign back to communicate with them was definitely very mentally taxing. Sometimes, if I was trying to sign and speak at the same time, it was almost like speaking two languages at once, so that was definitely different and something that I had to adjust to.”
After spending so much time using ASL at the camp, Wong said she felt like she was expressing her emotions more vividly than before because of the nature of ASL.
“When you’re using American Sign Language (ASL), a big part is using your facial expressions to communicate how you’re feeling,” Wong said. “There was a part of it that was actually really eye-opening to me because using your facial expressions to act out how you feel was really cool to me, and I found myself smiling a lot. I went to bed smiling, and I was laughing so much when the kids told me jokes. I was expressing myself so much more through my facial expressions than I normally do, and you feel how happy you are at the end of the day because you smile so much that it hurts.”
Returning from the camp, Wong said she admired the families for showing up with such positive attitudes, regardless of the struggles they had faced.
“It was really cool for me to come back and show my parents the signs I had learned and really just reflect on where I was before I went to the camp and where I was after,” Wong said. “It’s really inspiring to me how a lot of the kids and parents go through these struggles, but they are still showing up, and they were all really positive and uplifting. Especially because a lot of the time, there was still a struggle for me to know what to say or what to sign. It was a really good opportunity for me to go and be surrounded by a community that was so nice and positive, and really nurturing.”
Wong said she chose to immerse herself so deeply in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community because of her interest in medicine and desire to be able to communicate in such a unique language.
“For me, one of my interests has been going into medicine, specifically audiology and cochlear implants,” Wong said. “When I first got interested in learning ASL, it was because a friend of mine is deaf, so she kind of got me into learning some of the signs. I really, really want to be able to communicate with the deaf community because I feel like it’s so important that they are seen and welcomed and understood. It’s a really cool language because it’s not really like any other language. A lot of the signs [are] almost like you’re setting up a picture of what you’re trying to say. I also have seen how welcoming the deaf community is, especially after this camp, and that only makes me want to communicate with them and sign with them even more.”
Wong said that taking the time to understand people’s stories, where they’re at, and where they want to be is important.
“At the camp, I got to sit down with a lot of the parents and talk about their kids and how they have struggled to advocate for or communicate with their kids,” Wong said. “Hearing about those struggles really opened my eyes to a whole new perspective that I didn’t know about. Even some of the kids, as I play with them and talk with them, a lot of them are exploring their perspectives, learning about the world, and taking in the world in a way that I never did. It’s really cool to see, and I even met a kid who had just gotten his cochlear implants, and it was so amazing watching him take in the world with a whole different perspective. Seeing that and listening to people’s stories was really encouraging and inspiring to see.”
Through the three-day camp, Wong said she was given the opportunity to witness so much kindness and joy that had come from the understanding and support of such an encouraging environment.
“They’re really no different than any other kids,” Wong said. “They just want to have fun and you can see it on their faces, they have such huge smiles and it was really amazing to just see how much just being like, ’I can see you,’ or, ’I see you and I want to be there for you and I want to be friends with you,’ how far that can go in their lives is amazing.”
