Dinner Table Syndrome!
Growing up, I had this painful syndrome, especially during the Thanksgiving and holiday dinners.
The woman in the middle has it. Tell us why she is not laughing.
She happens to be deaf or hard of hearing.
If you have never seen the term before, google it up. Anyway, I am giving you some advice today before you will have the Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday.
I am cautioning you that some of your eldest parents, relatives, or peers with hearing problems have secrets - they have dinner table syndromes, too!!!
So therefore, this issue is for everyone!
The major dictionary companies do not have this term in their dictionaries, but many sources define it. Here is my definition:
"Dinner table syndrome" was initially started by people with profound deafness, but this term is widely used by hard-of-hearing people and senior citizens.
It describes the feeling of isolation a person with hearing loss has when surrounded by well-heard people, whether non-signing or signing, leading to exclusion from conversations at the dinner table.
“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?” explained Rachel Zemach, Deaf USAToday Opinion contributor
“If something is funny and everyone erupts in laughter, the deaf person will lean in to the closest person and ask what was so funny. More often than not they'll be told, ‘Oh, it was nothing’ or ‘I'll tell you later’. Except that later never comes.” said Dr. Leah Geer Zarchy, a deaf associate professor at California State University, Sacramento.
I often asked Anna, my baby cousin among eight cousins on my mother’s side, to sit beside me because I could read her lips quickly.
Also, the Nagish website has excellent “Tips to Beat ‘Dinner Table Syndrome.’”
I recommend watching the 30-minute video “The Dinner Table Syndrome.” Turn on closed captioned [CC]
During Thanksgiving Day this year, four signers and four non-signers will be at my son-in-law’s parents’ house, with the ninth person - my seven-month-old grandson. In a few years, the latter would join the signer group - the first time I would have a majority in my life.
Happy Thanksgiving Day!