Girl gives mother joy of learning, communicating
 Lim Mon Hin and her daughter Lim Sze Kee playing with nail polish at the Maybank Group’s Merdeka celebrations at Menara Maybank. Lim learned to sign with her daughter’s help. |
She gave her daughter the gift of life. And through her daughter, Lim Mon Lin got the gift of communication.
All she could think of was the long years of silence that she had endured and the misery of school, which she left unable to read or write.
But she wanted more for her daughter and enrolled her in the Community Service Centre for the Deaf in Bukit Nanas in 2004.
Watching daughter Sze Kee through her lessons, and with help from her teachers, Lim has learned to sign effortlessly and can now read basic English, Mandarin and Bahasa Malaysia.
Mother and daughter on Saturday attended the Maybank Group’s Merdeka celebrations at Menara Maybank.
Fifty children from various homes and charities joined the children of the group’s employees for a day of poetry reading, sand art, paper mache and manicures.
"In class there was another deaf girl but it was a Chinese medium school for hearing children," said Lim of her schooling years.
"We both failed all subjects. We had no clue what the teachers were saying, and we tried to guess the meanings of the Chinese characters they wrote.
"At school I had no friends, and at home my parents didn’t even realise I was deaf."
Her parents suspected something was wrong but with five mouths to feed, the fact that she was quiet and not making it at school took a back seat.
When she was 13, Lim said an aunt came to her rescue and offered her a job in her photocopying shop in Petaling Jaya.
Her Aunt Loh taught her how to count and use simple signs to indicate "eat", "sleep", "come" and "go".
Customers would jot down how many copies they needed and Lim would count out the change.
"My husband and I met when I was 19 and we fell in love and got married. We were so excited when I got pregnant with Sze Kee. But I broke down when my sister-in-law pointed at her ears and shook her head, when I took Sze Kee for a hearing test nearly a year after she was born."
Cindy Leong, a teacher at the centre, says that Sze Kee signs constantly with her mother and corrects her when she makes mistakes.
"The child is strong. The mother may be a fast learner, but Sze Kee is a wonder. She tells her mother not to worry and not to be sad when she’s down," said Leong.
For the years of silence have done their damage.
"I always hear laughter, sometimes it’s in my mind, but sometimes I think it’s real. I don’t want people to laugh at Sze Kee like they did at me.
"It’s very hard being deaf. But I was lucky. God has given me a gift through my daughter. I have learned that you are never too old or too deaf to learn," said Lim.
See 'The New Straits Times' newspaper
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