Family dinners are incredibly lonely for Deaf people like me. They don't need to be.

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The movie "CODA" took awards season by storm with its powerfully portrayed story of a teenager and her Deaf family. The film is clearly resonating with mainstream audiences, but the scene that tugged at my heartstrings is not one that most viewers would find poignant.

The scene shows the family of four around the dinner table, trading insults, jokes and hilariously discussing dating apps, in American Sign Language.

My own early memories of family dinners are good ones, too. Intimate and raucous, there was a sense of belonging among me, my three sisters and our parents. We were an imaginative, close-knit tribe and the conversation was as nourishing as the food, if in different ways.

'Dinner Table Syndrome'

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At age 10 I had an accident that left me suddenly deaf. One on one, I still understood my family, but at the dinner table, conversation was incomprehensible. I’d feel profoundly alone, encased in an invisible bubble. My hearing aid amplified the speech around me, but it sounded blurred, like a cacophony. I remember fighting off sudden hot tears one evening, running to my bedroom and slamming the door in despair.

Among Deaf people, this experience is so common it has a name: the Dinner Table Syndrome.

Years later, as a young adult, I visited my family for Thanksgiving. I wanted intensely to understand the banter. My older sister caught my glance and rolled her eyes at me, laughingly, as if she knew what I was thinking about what was being said. But I hadn’t caught a word in over an hour. It was startling how confident she was that I understood the conversation. Couldn’t she see in my eyes how disconnected I was? If so, did she expect me to fake it?

I wondered what I was doing there.

At the expense of my Deaf students

Later, I became a teacher of a Deaf class. My students, too, were left out of their dinner conversation. Most didn’t have any formal language – until my class, they hadn’t been taught ASL – and they were often left out of conversation in their homes. Their parents were dedicated and loving, but most didn’t sign. The school administrators and medical professionals they encountered never mentioned that ASL was the most accessible language for their children. The focus for those specialists had been on lipreading, speech and improving access to sound.

This approach is well-intentioned but often doesn't work and comes at the expense of access to meaningful language, skipping over the vital benefits that having language provides to the developing human brain. 

The dynamics of group conversation are fast, unpredictable and often devoid of context. Even if one has some hearing, one can quickly get lost. I’d make sure my students understood every single thing that happened in the classroom, but when I went home and had dinner with my husband and daughters, again I’d be left out. It felt stunning sometimes.

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Likewise, when I told my students a holiday was coming up the following week, a dark cloud would appear on many of their faces, rather than the excitement one might expect. This wasn’t because they didn’t love their families, but because they did, so it was hard being left out of the family dialogue.

A Deaf friend of mine recently posted an image on Facebook of a skeleton sitting on a couch. The caption: "Me, waiting for my family and friends to learn ASL." 

And in the case of hard-of-hearing people who read lips, is it fair for one person to do all the heavy lifting? Lipreading is extremely difficult, with many sounds formed out of sight, deep in the mouth and throat. It involves a lot of guesswork, like reading a text where 70% or more of the words are redacted. 

There are solutions. Some bring a Deaf friend to chat with at holiday meals. There are new tech tools – voice-to-text apps, for example – that can help, but they are rife with mistakes and not designed for noisy environments. Talking in a quieter room and making sure any games are visually based can help. 

Hearing loss is far from uncommon

Experts project that, in the near future, 1 in 4 people worldwide will have some hearing loss.

Those deaf and hard-of-hearing people who are not connected to the Deaf community won’t have learned ASL. They won’t have experienced the ebullience of socializing among the Deaf, they won’t learn Deaf life hacks for gatherings with hearing folks and they won't have the source of support that culturally Deaf people do.

The trauma of missing out on family communication is real and has deep implications. Some say they have never had a real conversation with their parents in their life. Many create new, chosen Deaf "families" to celebrate holidays with instead.

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Hearing people, listen to advice and solutions from the Deaf community members, who are resourceful, tough, humorous and creative. At the dinner table, ask Deaf family members how much they’re understanding and what can be done.

If specialists formed a united front, advocating strongly that all families of all deaf and hard-of-hearing children learn ASL, we could watch movies like "CODA" without having deep longing awoken in us for something as simple and profound as being able to chat with our loved ones, easily.

We could retire the Dinner Table Syndrome and start simply enjoying our families. And the food. 

Rachel Zemach worked for 10 years in the California public school system and lived to tell the tale. She’s in Marin, California, and has a memoir, "The Butterfly Cage," out on submission.