20 Neighbors Learn Sign Language After Family with Deaf Daughter Moves In
Community — it’s something that seems to have become increasingly rare. With social media attracting our attention at every turn, real life relationships sometimes fall to the wayside.
But for one neighborhood in Newton, Massachusetts, community is all they appear to be thinking about, especially when it comes to 2-year-old Samantha Savitz.
When she and her parents, Glenda and Raphael, moved to Newton, they were welcomed with cookies and smiles, Boston Globe reported.
It wasn’t until their neighbors observed them out on walks that they noticed the family signing to little Samantha, whose newborn screening tests confirmed she was deaf during her first week of life.
“She was the first deaf person my husband and I had known,” 33-year-old Glenda told the Boston Globe.
She and her husband committed to learning sign language after that, an action Glenda says she knew would be “important to her [daughter’s] development and her growth.”
And it is clear their newest neighbors feel the same way. In an act of kindness and unity, they decided to get together and take American Sign Language classes at night so they could communicate with Samantha too.
Then they took it a step further. “They came to me and said ‘Would you mind — we love the course, we love the teacher.'”
“‘Would you mind if we hired the teacher and brought him back to the neighborhood? Can we have your permission?'” Glenda told WCVB.
“I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she went on. “Yeah, you can have my permission!'” From there the community came together in silence and sign — a beautiful sight to witness.
“This child will always be a child of this neighborhood,” neighbor Terry Nowak shared with the Globe. Nowak grew up in Newton and raised her three children in the area.
“We will all be participants in helping her as she grows,” Nowak continued. “We do that with each other’s children. The community is already in place. This is just a new way to express it.’’
Wow! What a way to pull out the welcome wagon and make the Savitz family feel at home. We have no doubt Samantha will grow up feeling loved and included by those around her.
This simple act almost makes us want to move to Newton, Massachusetts, too. This kind of community is rare and one this family will probably cherish for years to come.
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