Tressa Bowers’ life changed when she gave birth to a deaf daughter. Throughout the process of raising her, she learned about and became a part of a whole other community. Her view of deaf people drastically changed from the beginning of the book to the end. Tressa had first begun to suspect Alandra’s deafness around the time Alandra was five months old. Part of it may have been a mother’s intuition, part of it may have been due to paranoia over losing her other two children or spending time with Linda’s deaf daughter, Joy. She had noticed similarities in Joy and Alandra and differences between other children and Alandra. It must have been very frustrating to repeatedly hear everyone ignore her worries and concerns, especially Dr. Buzan, who had advised her to wait until Alandra was a year old before even talking to a specialist. …show more content…
She saw it as an obstacle that they would be able to overcome with hard work. And so, after a good cry to just let all of her fears, worries, and grievances out, she buckled down and started looking at options for her deaf daughter. First, they tried the oral method at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. Once a week, for two years, they drove thirty miles to attend an hour-long class. This was very difficult and tedious, and certainly not the best communication method, but it was the only resource they had at the time, and at least it gave them a foundation to work off of from there. The summer Alandra turned two years old, Tressa and Alandra, accompanied by Linda and Joy, attended a two-week long seminar for parents of deaf children at the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville. The psychologist there highly recommended American Sign Language as the main form of communication, but Tressa disregarded his advice, wanting to stick to the oral method, which they had been working so hard on,