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All I can say is WOW!
As an educator, special educator, HOH/Deaf child(losing hearing at age 3), HOH/deaf adult, CI user, and overall parent, I learned a lot from this debate. I only found this site about a month ago, so I did not even not these types of debates were around.
All I can say is from personal experience and that is thank you mom for taking the time to teach me language skills and encouraging me to make MY choice. I choose to communicate orally. She supported me completely. I see it both ways in my school. We have a preschool who the parents want ASL only because they don't want to encourage oral language development. I have a 5th grader who is HOH and the parents don't believe that she needs to even say she is HOH. What little sign she does with me is what we do for "fun."
So keep up this debate, but remember MOST parents want to do what is best for their children. I have seen horrible abuse, really horrible things and I would not put my CI surgery in that category. I would not put my wearing HOH in the same place either.
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