S’pore woman, 32, started learning sign language at 6, to help deaf sister feel less alone in the world

Gail Ng was in kindergarten when she realised what the silence in her house meant.

Growing up as the youngest of four girls, Ng expected every room in the house to be filled with constant chatter.

But she soon caught on that something was different about one of her sisters.

Three years older than Ng, the third eldest sister often seemed to be in her own world.

Ng would follow her everywhere, wondering why her big sister ignored people when they called her name, and rarely spoke.

“I did wonder what had happened to her, and I asked my mum many times, but she didn't really want to talk about it. So we just left it at that,” Ng recounted while speaking to Mothership.

As far as her mother was concerned, there was nothing more to discuss.

It wasn’t till a couple of years later that Ng finally understood that her sister was deaf.

A silent struggle in the family

A year before she entered primary school, an incident occurred involving Ng, her sister, and their mother in the kitchen.

Ng remembered her mum cooking and rattling off instructions for the girls to help.

It was easy for Ng, who flitted about the kitchen fetching the ingredients and preparing them when asked.

Meanwhile, her sister stood in the middle of the chaos looking dazed.

“My sister would stand there not understanding what my mum wanted. Then my mum would start pointing at things and mouthing the words, but my sister still couldn't understand her,” Ng said.

“My mum came from a Chinese-speaking family and couldn’t speak English, so there were two [communication] barriers.”

Their mother ended up raising her voice at them, shouting at Ng to help relay the message to her sister.

But moments like these didn’t take away from the fact that the woman loved her girls as much as any mother would.

Ng came to a realisation of her mother’s love when she saw her mum crying, thinking she was alone, and when her eyes lingered on Ng’s sister while they were out in public, worried of the dangers her daughter might face.

She said: “My mum has always felt guilty towards my sister. She would cry, and for many years, she brought my sister around to seek help in hopes of regaining her hearing or at least improving it.”

Alone in the crowd

Ng later discovered that her sister was made deaf in an accident that took place before Ng was born.

It was hard to decide which was worse: being born deaf, or knowing what the world sounded like only to have it stolen from you.

“Looking at my sister, you wouldn’t guess that she is deaf,” said Ng.

This led to many misunderstandings with strangers, who thought her sister to be rude when she didn’t respond to them.

Even situations that were once familiar ended up becoming alienating, causing the girl to retreat into herself.

“When we were at family gatherings, people would talk across each other over the table…My sister would be sitting there having no idea what people are talking about,” Ng shared.

The more Ng watched, the more her sister seemed to be drifting away from the rest of the world.

So Ng decided that she would learn sign language to bridge the gap.

Breaking the silence

When asked how long it took her to learn sign, the now-32-year-old Ng admitted that she was still learning, even though it has been over 20 years.

But Ng’s efforts were enough to change the dynamics of her family.

“I became the messenger at home,” Ng said.

She added that her sister would rely on her to voice her thoughts to the rest of the family, and vice versa.

As Ng’s ability to sign grew stronger, she found her sister confiding in her more.

With at least one person at home understanding her, Ng’s sister also grew confident in signing and reaching out to others who shared her condition.

Fear of “big words”

When Ng graduated university in 2016, she began work in a field that she had never imagined herself in: financial advisory.

There are people who seem to have a negative perception of financial representatives, and even Ng herself acknowledged that as well.

“I know there are a lot of financial representatives out there who truly want to make a difference,” she said, adding that she was one of them.

All she asked was for people to give her a chance.

Still fresh in the role and hoping to hone her skills, Ng asked her sister if she had done any financial planning of her own. That was when her sister revealed that she was already a customer at Prudential, where Ng worked.

But her sister revealed that she had other deaf friends who feared the “big words” often uttered by financial representatives.

Asking her sister to refer her friends to her, Ng decided to put a stop to that fear.

Speaking in another’s first language

Most people may think finance is all about dealing with cold, hard numbers.

But after eight years in the industry, Ng found out that it was about being human.

When she first met her sister’s friends, Ng noted that they were reserved because of past experiences with financial representatives.

She found it important to empathise with their condition, hear about the future they’d like to have, and support them in achieving it.

“Sign language is a first language to deaf people,” she said.

Ng’s ability to communicate with her clients on this level made it easier for them to trust her.

They were able to open up about problems they faced, which were often related to being intimidated by complex financial terminology.

Ng even became “more like friends” with some of them.

Speaking about a particular client she had once accompanied to the hospital during an emergency, Ng said: “We don’t meet often or text every day, but she will share with me her life events and such.”

“At the end of the day when I get home, when I think about how I made a difference in someone’s life, that’s what keeps me going,” she reflected.

While financial representatives can forge strong connections with their customers, part of the job involves dealing with rejection.

For Ng, there are days when trying to speak someone else’s first language takes a toll — like when she struggles to find the right sign for “insurance” and “hospitalisation”, or when she becomes the target of misplaced frustration when they don’t understand her signing.

Other times, the public’s perception of her job casts a shadow over the good work she tries to do.

But in every one of her customers, Ng sees a bit of her sister when she was younger — alone and scared, waiting for the world to become less intimidating.

And for that, she will keep trying.

*Quotes have been edited for clarity.

This sponsored article by Prudential Singapore made the writer reconsider meeting her Financial Representative for lunch.

Top images courtesy of Gail Ng