At an age when most toddlers start mumbling their first words, Helen Radley was busy communicating in sign language.

While most children learn much of their verbal language from their parents, Helen had to learn through others around her.

Her signing skills developed quickly and before long she was happily conversing in her first and main language, sign.

However, having deaf parents presented her with challenges many other children never had to face, not all of them pleasant.

She was less confident using her verbal speech than other pupils at school, despite being fluent in sign - not unlike a child who grows up using a foreign language for whom English is their second language.

She also suffered discrimination and often abuse at the hands of ignorant people who did not understand her sign language.

However, over the years, odd comments and strange looks from people at the school gates have strengthened her resolve, making her immensely proud of a distinctive upbringing.

Her parents, Janis, 51, and Derek, 54, from Sompting, met at a deaf club and have been married for 32 years.

Helen's earliest memory is of practising the sign alphabet at the dinner table.

She said: "I would get home from school and the first thing I would do was break into sign.

"I always felt more comfortable at home. I used to be quite shy and kept myself to myself at school. I always did my own thing.

"It was a different environment, which I was not used to.

"But, through my working life, I have become more confident verbally."

With sign being the main language at the Radleys' former home in Patcham, Brighton, Helen and her sisters Rosie, 21, and Mandy Parratt, 28, became adept at talking without speaking.

Her hands unconsciously whirl and flex with every sentence, as if simultaneously using both styles of communication.

Sign can involve subtle body gestures and a facial expression can give some signals a different meaning.

The bond created by living in such a unique household was not always a happy affair.

Helen, from Mile Oak, Southwick, said: "My parents always use sign.

"They barely use their voice boxes and the noises they make are not words, more like mumbled sounds.

"I used to notice people's reactions when Mum picked me up from school.

"Because her voice was different, people used to stare - they did not understand."

She recalls how sometimes the discrimination went further than just stares.

At one stage, the family had their windows smashed and suffered verbal abuse.

"It has made my views stronger and, as I get older, I don't take it any more.

"The abuse made things quite tough and it gives you another view.

"For me, it was natural for Mum and Dad to be deaf.

"It's my family, my way of life.

"I can understand people's curiosity, and that is fine, but I cannot stand it when people pick you out because of a disability."

Her mother sometimes needed help out of the home because of difficulties with her balance and sight and the fact not every shop assistant could understand her.

Helen said she and her sisters would interpret for their mother when they went shopping.

"If she wanted to say something, we would go and ask. If people came to the door, we would ask the questions.

"We are all so close and sign has played a big part in that because we rely on each other more than most.

"The best thing is now I am proud.

"Before, because of people acting strangely, I did not know how to take it.

"Now I'm more proud to sign in public, which is a nice feeling. I love showing off about it.

"The worst thing has been people's reactions when it is a bad one.

"It reminds me of how people can be, even nowadays, in the new century."

Helen works at Seeboard's offices in Portland Road, Hove, and has used her job to raise awareness of deaf people.

She recently talked colleagues into supporting a charity human-sized table football match, which raised £1,000 for the Royal National Institute for the Deaf.

Sign comes in handy when the Radley sisters are out on the town and want to keep a conversation private, although Helen said more people were learning how to sign.

"People are making an effort to get on sign language courses and deaf awareness courses.

"Mum is losing her sight as well - it is another obstacle that is going to happen.

"I'm trying to get involved with the Royal National Institute for the Blind to see if there is anything I can do."