Mr. Shane Hamilton:

I went to a mainstream school from basically junior infants up to first class. I did not really have any deaf friends during that time. I knew some deaf children, but I would only see them every few years, depending on events in the Deaf Village Ireland, DVI, that we would go to. As a result, most of my friends from a young age were hearing. That helped me speak clearly, but there was definitely a cultural difference in that they did not have their whole family being deaf. They did not know anyone deaf other than me, so when I tried to relate to them on their hearing experiences, it would not really correlate back. I had had a different family experience than them because at home if I wanted to call my mam, I could not just yell out her name. I would have to knock on the floor or the stairs. When my mam is calling me for dinner she often has to knock on the stairs, because if she just yells out my name, I most likely will not hear her. In a hearing household that is not a thing at all. Maybe it is a simple phone text, or they just go to the stairs and call or maybe they just say the name once and that is it. That posed a big social problem for me when I was young, because it made me feel different from my peers. It showed I was different and I stood out more than I wanted to. In classes with 30-plus people and with the radio, you stand out a lot, and usually it is not in a good light but a very negative one.