deaf, CI and HA safety issues

Lilysdad, maybe a good idea might be to present ASL as an option. Research has indicated that most orally educated kids DO eventually learn Sign.
Number one on the list is practical: Many dhh with oral skills do still need to use 'terps in the classroom or any sittution beyond one on one.
Also with that, is that while some MANY educated kids do well with speech, they might be able to do even better with the tool of Sign. Buy this anthology: Netfirms Commerce Pro
read my story, and use the analogy of how I did semi ok learning how to ski in a regular ski school class for years and years....but even after all those years I was still at essentially an advanced beginner level. Then I started taking lessons through an adaptive ski school and just totally took off!

Another practical reason for learning ASL is that very often, "oral accomondations" really aren't that available. Usually the only accomondations out there (like museums and other public things) are ASL terps.
Another thing that ties into that is that the majority of public school programs/accomndations tend to be TC style....there's not too many really good oral public programs/ accomondations (and the accomdations that exist tend to be bare bone "basic" accomondations)
Anthoer good reason to learn ASL is that their kids will become BILINGAL.....fluent in ASL AND speech!
It's a good skill to have............'terps and ASL fluent TODs are ALWAYS in demand!
The kids will be able to function both with their hearing aids/CIs and WITHOUT! A broken/malfunctioning thing won't be such a big deal any more.
Also maybe it will up oral kids self esteem. A lot of times, our self esteem is really low b/c it seems like the only thing important in the world is speech, speech speech 24/7. Why should we dhh kids have to live life as an eternal speech therapy session? Bring up those reasons............I bet you anything a lot of the parents will go "OMG! I didn't think about that!" Maybe then we'll have some more parents on the bilinagal side!
 
Originally Posted by shel90
Parent B: My child is deaf. With both sign language and a cochlear implant, and good speech training, my child will be able to communicate with both hearing and deaf people. My child may or may not be mainstreamed. People may or may not be able to tell that my child is deaf, and it does not matter if they can or can not.

Originally Posted by
VAMPRYOX

don't really know. Just imagine yourself not being able to hear... then imagine yourself going places. Will there be any moments when your deafness was an issue?

People calling out your name.

Crossing the street.

Emergency vehicles.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I Agree with both. With the implants the child can experience both cultures and will be able to recognize either way of communicating.
 
DD, I dont know if you remember this or not, but I DO sign with Lilly. I also think I said earlier in this thread that while the school does not teach sign, they accept that most families do sign with thier child. The attitude of Lillys school has changed over the decades. While they do not teach sign, they accept that we use it and teach our children. If you think about it, we (as parents) are not paying an ass load of $ to sign with our kids. I/we realize that our kids natrual language is sign. But we also want them to be able to listen and speak, orally.
 
Lilysdad, I know.........I know you sign with Lily........and that's great!
I was just pointing out that maybe it might be a good idea to encourage ASL as a second language thing.............b/c a lot of hearing parents tend to think "Oh speech is enough"..............For some kids yes, speech is enough.....but the majority of kids might be able to benifit significently from ASL as an enrichment thing. Then maybe more kids could avoid the pitfalls and downfalls that other generations of oral only kids went through..........that's all. And yes, I know that you're paying a lot of money for your kids to hear and speak.....that doesn't mean that they can't get access to ASL or other Sign on an enrichment basis. Maybe it might be the key to real sucess for a lot of them.
 
Lillys dad said:
DD, I dont know if you remember this or not, but I DO sign with Lilly. I also think I said earlier in this thread that while the school does not teach sign, they accept that most families do sign with thier child. The attitude of Lillys school has changed over the decades. While they do not teach sign, they accept that we use it and teach our children. If you think about it, we (as parents) are not paying an ass load of $ to sign with our kids. I/we realize that our kids natrual language is sign. But we also want them to be able to listen and speak, orally.
Click to expand...

Wow...what if the oral method doesn't work for some of these kids? What about their literacy and language development skills? What's the harm of doing both in the educational setting? That is what I really do not understand. I just see ASL as the only language that is fully accessible to deaf children. In my early years, oralism wasn't a big deal cuz little kids learn thru play but when I got older and vocabulary words or discussions became more lengthy in the classroom, that was when I really missed out on a lot of info. If I had access to ASL during those school years (upper elementary, middle and high school) I would have learned a whole lot more skills such as for example, to be able to debate or justify a point. I didn't have that skill until I went to Gally in which I finally learned how to be objective rather than be subjective. I would try to argue my point in my social studies class but I got mostly C's and D's in my critiques. I couldn't understand for the life of me what I was doing wrong. Now looking back, I couldn't catch everything that was said nor could I learn from my hearing peers so I never was able to develop that kind of thinking until I went to Gallaudent cuz spoken English wasn't fully accessible to me. Those kinds of critical thinking skills are what enables people to get ahead in the "game" career wise. I want to see more deaf people in top jobs.

Now, I see so many deaf children being "dumped" at my school from the oral programs cuz they weren't able to keep up with their hearing peers. It is so pathetic that their literacy and critical thinking skills r compromised because they didn't have 100% access to language in those educational setting even with an interpreter.

That's my opinion and that's why I just still don't understand why can't both be offered in all deaf ed programs? Is being able to listen and speak more important than developing literacy and critical thinking skills? Why can both be just as equally important? ASL for language and literacy development and listening and speaking skills to be able to interact with hearing people? Why not?
 
excellent point shel...............yes its good that they are no longer as anti Sign as they were..............but they still should do something proactive, instead of just dumpting the oral failures at the deaf schools.
 
edited: I misread the OP oops

The biggest problem with deaf children is self esteem.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top