egan Burgess, 15, is your typical teenage girl. She likes boys and hanging out with her friends. She keeps up her grades at CedarBridge Academy and has an afterschool job.

The only difference about Megan is that when her parents nag her about cleaning her room, she closes her eyes instead of her ears.

When Megan was two years old meningitis left her profoundly deaf. Faced with with an array of options, cochlea implants, hearing aids, oral (speech and lip-reading), sign language or some combination of these things, her parents Juliana and Walter Burgess chose sign language and some oral.

Now Megan wants other parents of deaf and hearing impaired children to know just how grateful she is for her parents "unselfish" decision.

"My advice to all parents who recently found out that their child is either hearing impaired or deaf, is that they should have an open mind and think of their child's future, not their own future," Megan told .

Megan and her parents wanted to respond to a previous Lifestyle article about a parent of a hearing impaired child who was starting a group for parents who wanted their children to be oral. The parent in this article did not intend to have her small child taught sign language at this time.

"Each parent should discover many different ways, different paths, and then find the one that is suitable for their child," said Megan. "However, I recommend signing to go along with whatever the parent chooses."

Megan said that some audiologists think learning sign will stop vocalisations, but she said this hasn't been the case for her.

She said that some parents of hearing impaired or deaf children also feared that they wouldn't be able to communicate with their child if the child used sign language.

"Look at my mom and me," Megan said. "We get along. We talk about boys and God knows what else in sign language. So do not misunderstand the purpose of sign language. It is our language. It is a beautiful language."

She begged parents not to deprive their children of the sign language option.

"I know somewhere later in their lives, they would want to learn and communicate with many deaf people," Megan said.

Mr. Burgess said back when he and his wife were making the decision, they chose sign language because it was a definite.

"Technology was not going to change her deafness," said Mr. Burgess. "The option was to aid her hearing with the cochlea implant. We had a window of three or four weeks to make the decision. Or we could use total communication with sign language. At this point we are talking about a 26-month-old child."

Megan's cochleae were entirely ossified. The operation for a cochlea implant would have lasted hours, and there was no guarantee that the operation would work. "We opted to do sign language because we knew that it worked," said Mrs. Burgess.

Mrs. Burgess and her husband did not know sign language, but they were willing to do anything to communicate with their daughter.

"It is not difficult to learn when you are a parent who needs to communicate with their child. You will do anything. We hired a deaf person and he taught us sign language. He came twice a week in the evening."

Mr. and Mrs. Burgess also took night classes and workshops for many years to become adept at the language. Now they are so used to signing with their daughter that they often used the odd sign when they are talking to hearing people. What they were saying actually had extra clarity, because it was backed up visually with gestures.

"We are trying to stress that there is nothing wrong with sign language," said Mr. Burgess. "Parents shouldn't be afraid. Signing seems to have a stigma that really shouldn't be attached to it. It is a recognised language."

Mrs. Burgess said some parents chose to forgo sign language and force their child down the oral route ? where a child is given speech lessons to make them speak, because they fear that the child won't want to speak if they have sign language.

"Just because your child does sign language doesn't mean that it is going to cut off her speech," Mrs. Burgess said.

Because Megan became deaf when she was two, she already had some speech. She even spoke a little Portuguese and she still vocalises quite a lot.

"I had speech therapy and I hated it," Megan said, using her voice. "I would say parents should not cut off the sign language option. Sign language is something that is readily available. We are born with the ability to sign. It is visual. Speech therapy is fine, but a deaf child's parents should include both options, sign language and oral."

Throughout her schooling the government has provided Megan with a series of sign language teachers and classroom interpreters including Denise Booth, Virginia Wilson and Joycie Fazon. The only condition was that Megan had to attend government schools.

"When Megan entered preschool and we had the support of government and we had a full-time interpreter, it made a world of difference," said Mr. Burgess. "The interpreter helped Megan achieve the academic grades that she had."

Unfortunately, the government wouldn't pay for an interpreter to be at extracurricular activities or school trips.

Still, Mrs. Burgess said the sign language hasn't cut Megan off from anything.

"Megan is an extrovert," said Mrs. Burgess. "She will communicate with any hearing person if that person gives her an opportunity to socialise with them."

Megan said she hates it when people's behaviour changes when they find out she is deaf.

"I'll be at the store, packing groceries, and a customer will say something to me. The cashier will say, 'don't talk to her, she's deaf'. It irritates. Right away the customer's face changes and they turn away. They don't even try to talk to me."

Megan said she doesn't yet know what she wants to do as a career, but she enjoys science, art, photography and world history in school.

"I hate math," she said. "I like English. We are doing Macbeth right now. Sometimes I get excited by it and sometimes I hate it. It depends on what character you are."

Things don't always go smoothly though. In Megan's entire school career she has only ever had one teacher who tried to learn sign language.

Another problem can be emergency alarms. Recently, Megan had a scare when an alarm bell went off in her school. According to her parents, there is supposed to be a visual alarm at CedarBridge, but on this day it was not working.

"I was in textile class at CedarBridge and I was working at the sewing machine," said Megan. "My friends were pulling my arm and saying 'Megan, Megan'. I was like 'What?'. They were saying 'the alarm, the alarm'. The visual alarm was broken. That is scary, because I wouldn't have known otherwise."

Megan said that although her parents have always treated her like a normal teenager, they are sometimes overprotective.

"If I had brothers or sisters, the attention would be divided amongst us," Megan said. "As a single child they look at me 1,000 percent. Sometimes it is a good thing and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes my parents drive me crazy with where are you going, who are you going with. I guess that is normal."

One thing that has helped Megan is attending a summer camp for deaf children.

"Since Megan was ten-years-old every year for the summer we send her to a deaf camp called Mark Seven in New York state," said Mrs. Burgess. "She loves that."

"I don't want to come back from that," said Megan. "They have to drag me away from my friends. I would also like to go to a deaf youth leadership camp in Oregon for one month. It is a four week camp. It is for deaf people to learn leadership skills."

Although being deaf has disadvantages, it does carry with it the privilege of being part of a diverse community.

"When an oral person who is deaf comes up to me and my friends and starts talking to us, we really can't communicate," said Megan. "It is sad. When I see another person signing on the street, I will often go up to them and talk to them, even if I don't know them."