Designing A Hearing Baby

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Maria

Maria

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A friend of mine sent me this thru an email. What do you think of this ? Agree or disagree ? As for me, I agree with this woman. It makes sense since it is tooo early to have CI surgery on 6 months old baby.

Please, respect individual's point of view & opinions. Let's start discussin'!

:ty:

DEAF CINEMATIC FILMBLOG: Designing A Hearing Baby
 
I think Sweetmind already posted this? You can read her thread which was closed (surprise surprise) to get an idea of how people feel about it.

Well, all I can say it's controversial whether a baby is implanted at 6 months or at age 3 and sometimes even when the deaf person is an adult making their own choice. You can't make everyone or every group happy in life as we are all very diverse. I'd say research whatever you do extensively and make an informed choice that is best for you, your family and your child.
 
Maria said:
A friend of mine sent me this thru an email. What do you think of this ? Agree or disagree ? As for me, I agree with this woman. It makes sense since it is tooo early to have CI surgery on 6 months old baby.
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The decision is to have your child grow up with the possibility of hearing, or grow up deaf.
If the choice is the first option, then there is no reason to wait with applying for the operation. From that point, it is up to the medical staff to decide WHEN to operate.
In general, 6 months will be very early anyway since it takes time to go through the process, but if all is OK to go, then having the child adjust to sound as early as possible is a good thing.
Some articles have shown that the benefit of operating before the age of 1 year is minimal. However, there starts to be a deifference between children operated when they were 2-3 compared to 1-2...

Have a look here....
Age at implantation and development of vocal and auditory preverbal skills in implanted deaf children

M.E. Taita, T.P. Nikolopoulosb, , and M.E. Lutmanc
a The Ear Foundation, Nottingham, United Kingdom
b Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Athens University, Greece
c Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Received 13 September 2006; revised 16 December 2006; accepted 18 December 2006. Available online 18 January 2007.

Background
Preverbal vocal and auditory skills are essential precursors of spoken language development and they have been shown previously to predict later speech perception and production outcomes in young implanted deaf children.

Objectives
To assess the effect of age at implantation on the development of vocal and auditory preverbal skills in implanted children.

Methods
The study assessed 99 children, 33 in each of three groups (those implanted between 1 and 2 years; 2 and 3 years; and 3 and 4 years). Preverbal skills were measured in three areas: turn taking, autonomy and auditory awareness of spoken language, using the Tait video analysis method.

Results
The youngest implanted group made an exceptional progress outperforming in all measures the two other groups (p < 0.01), 6 and 12 months post-implantation, whereas there was no such difference before implantation. In the youngest group there was also significantly greater use of an auditory/oral style of communication: 85% of the group by 12 months post-implantation compared with 30% and 18% of the two older groups.

Conclusions
Vocal and auditory preverbal skills develop much more rapidly in children implanted between 1 and 2 years in comparison with older implanted children and reach a significantly higher level by 6 and 12 months post-implantation. In addition, younger implanted children are significantly more likely by 12 months post-implantation to adopt an auditory/oral mode of communication. These findings favour cochlear implantation as early as between 1 and 2 years, provided that correct diagnosis and adequate hearing-aid trial have been achieved
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Cloggy said:
The decision is to have your child grow up with the possibility of hearing, or grow up deaf.
If the choice is the first option, then there is no reason to wait with applying for the operation. From that point, it is up to the medical staff to decide WHEN to operate.
In general, 6 months will be very early anyway since it takes time to go through the process, but if all is OK to go, then having the child adjust to sound as early as possible is a good thing.
Some articles have shown that the benefit of operating before the age of 1 year is minimal. However, there starts to be a deifference between children operated when they were 2-3 compared to 1-2...

Have a look here....
Click to expand...

Vocal and auditory pre-verbal skills. Pretty much says it all. sigh
 
Is it okay for me to design myself a deaf baby?
 
jillio said:
Is it okay for me to design myself a deaf baby?
Click to expand...

I'm still wondering if that would be legal. I have the feeling it would NOT be, tho...but I'd still like to know...
 
jillio said:
Is it okay for me to design myself a deaf baby?
Click to expand...

Interesting question! although I had to admit that I was a bit disappointed when I found out that my kids are not deaf...
 
Cloggy said:
The decision is to have your child grow up with the possibility of hearing, or grow up deaf.
If the choice is the first option, then there is no reason to wait with applying for the operation. From that point, it is up to the medical staff to decide WHEN to operate.
In general, 6 months will be very early anyway since it takes time to go through the process, but if all is OK to go, then having the child adjust to sound as early as possible is a good thing.
Some articles have shown that the benefit of operating before the age of 1 year is minimal. However, there starts to be a deifference between children operated when they were 2-3 compared to 1-2...

Have a look here....
Click to expand...

Yeah, but where's the baby's rights to make the decisions on his/her own, not parents' ? I feel that the parents don't love deaf babies by changin' them to become hearing babies - I mean, how come they don't ACCEPT " deaf " the way the baby was born with ? I believe in NATURAL. When the baby understands the words or comprehend things around the baby as she/he gets older, then the parents can INTRODUCE this CI to her/him and ask questions about it.

This will also give me the idea here : Some schools have their sign language classes, right ? And, hearin' students can learn it from schools by earnin' credits. It is a rewardin' without causin' death or illnesses. BUT, with havin' CI thru surgery - it is highly risk and it could cause death or illnesses. That's like if, it replaces a donor in patient's body and, then it reacts - couldn't accept it in a patient's body because it don't work or compatible. This patient could get sick or die. Same idea....

Soo... it's best to leave the decisions to that child when that child gets older. It will make the parents to feel more safer, because if the parents leave it to the child, then this will make the parents to feel without regrets or causin' complications. Show some care and be thoughtful for the child.

It's up to child if, this will make this child HAPPY or not. It's not the parents' happiness - because, THAT CI are not ON the parents.
 
Maria said:
Yeah, but where's the baby's rights to make the decisions on his/her own, not parents' ? I feel that the parents don't love deaf babies by changin' them to become hearing babies - I mean, how come they don't ACCEPT " deaf " the way the baby was born with ?
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Either way, you are making a choice for the baby. If you don't implant when they are young, they may not have the choice when they are older because many CI centres will refuse to implant deaf adults with little or no speech or do so very reluctantly. Even if they find a program to implant them, the results for prelinguals without speech has been observed to be very limited and many of them do not continue to use their CIs. They would need extensive counselling to make sure they understand that as well.

Personally, if I was a profoundly deaf baby who was too deaf to benefit from hearing aids, I'd want my parents to give me the ability to make my choices further down the track when I'm old enough. That is, give me an implant early on enough to be able to develop speech so that I can choose later on whether I want to continue with it or turn it off. I would not want a hollow choice where I'm told I can get a CI but when it would be a complete waste of time because it's too late to develop speech skills.

I realise that you don't agree and understand and respect that. I'm just pointing out that there is a range of opinion out there even among us deaf, let alone hearing people. There are deaf people who'd think that you were too concessionary to the hearing world for being okay with deaf adults getting CIs. You can't please everyone.
 
R2D2 said:
Either way, you are making a choice for the baby. If you don't implant when they are young, they may not have the choice when they are older because many CI centres will refuse to implant deaf adults with little or no speech or do so very reluctantly. Even if they find a program to implant them, the results for prelinguals without speech has been observed to be very limited and many of them do not continue to use their CIs. They would need extensive counselling to make sure they understand that as well.

...
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Precisely!!! Hobson's choice is no choice at all.
 
Well said, R2D2. I've been on record as saying I support CIs in babies but if evidence supports later implantation rather than early implantation, then I'll revise my opinion. I came to support this in babies rather recultantly.

If I ever implant any child of mine, I'd want that child to be in a bi-bi program as I refuse to take a risk with my child's language skills.
 
Well.............
I used to be anti CIs, for babies due to the "choice" argument. That's before I understood that some babies are too deaf to benifit from HA.
I can see both sides of the argument. I have to say I'm still not totally gung ho for CI, b/c it's just too hard to tell accuratly how well a little baby hears. I know of cases where kids received a dx of profound losses on the BAER but on more tradtional hearing tests, it was revealed that they had more hoh losses.
I am 100% OK with CIs for little babies with auditory nereopathy. That's a kind of loss where hearing aids absolutly positively don't help at ALL!
I do think that if a baby has some residual hearing (ie profound but not deep profound loss) that the parents should take a wait and see approach.
Oh and Cloggy, what the heck does preverbal behavoiors have to do with talking? The preverbal behavoirs and vocalizations, simply indicate that there's no apraxia present. Apraxia is VERY common in dhh kids. Also early babbling is important, but the appearance of it, doesn't automaticly mean that later spoken language will not be a problem.
 
pretty impressive video
I bet that baby's parents feel guilty for doing this to their own baby.
 
Maria said:
Yeah, but where's the baby's rights to make the decisions on his/her own, not parents' ? I feel that the parents don't love deaf babies by changin' them to become hearing babies - I mean, how come they don't ACCEPT " deaf " the way the baby was born with ? I believe in NATURAL. When the baby understands the words or comprehend things around the baby as she/he gets older, then the parents can INTRODUCE this CI to her/him and ask questions about it.

This will also give me the idea here : Some schools have their sign language classes, right ? And, hearin' students can learn it from schools by earnin' credits. It is a rewardin' without causin' death or illnesses. BUT, with havin' CI thru surgery - it is highly risk and it could cause death or illnesses. That's like if, it replaces a donor in patient's body and, then it reacts - couldn't accept it in a patient's body because it don't work or compatible. This patient could get sick or die. Same idea....

Soo... it's best to leave the decisions to that child when that child gets older. It will make the parents to feel more safer, because if the parents leave it to the child, then this will make the parents to feel without regrets or causin' complications. Show some care and be thoughtful for the child.

It's up to child if, this will make this child HAPPY or not. It's not the parents' happiness - because, THAT CI are not ON the parents.
Click to expand...



Maria, You are right and I have seen the film "Designing the Hearing Baby". Boy, that made me sad and cried because the deaf woman is trying to explain to us that this beautiful baby should not be operate for the CI. What she is trying to say is that the baby is perfect and beautiful and why would the doctors or hearing parents want to have a Cochlear Implant on just a beautiful baby? Let the baby be natural and just be deaf no matter what. I really agree with Maria about what she is saying that it is important for children to be natural the way they are until they grow old enough for them to understand about Cochlear Implant and if they want to have it. I don't care if deaf adult don't have speech problem or could not lipread. They can make a choice if they want to have Cochlear Implant. It is suppose to be a free country no matter how different we are. As for being deaf we are happy and we are use to it, of course we will have hearing aids which we can rely on sound. I am really against CI, because anything could happen in the operating room trying to fix the deaf to become normal hearing. Well, Surprise, surprise that it is not going to be perfectly normal hearing. They might become hard of hearing, but not perfect. So hearing people, wake up and smell the coffee. Please accept us as :deaf: people and don't try to change us or fix us. It is not fair at all. :ily:
 
R2D2 said:
Either way, you are making a choice for the baby. If you don't implant when they are young, they may not have the choice when they are older because many CI centres will refuse to implant deaf adults with little or no speech or do so very reluctantly. Even if they find a program to implant them, the results for prelinguals without speech has been observed to be very limited and many of them do not continue to use their CIs. They would need extensive counselling to make sure they understand that as well.

Personally, if I was a profoundly deaf baby who was too deaf to benefit from hearing aids, I'd want my parents to give me the ability to make my choices further down the track when I'm old enough. That is, give me an implant early on enough to be able to develop speech so that I can choose later on whether I want to continue with it or turn it off. I would not want a hollow choice where I'm told I can get a CI but when it would be a complete waste of time because it's too late to develop speech skills.

I realise that you don't agree and understand and respect that. I'm just pointing out that there is a range of opinion out there even among us deaf, let alone hearing people. There are deaf people who'd think that you were too concessionary to the hearing world for being okay with deaf adults getting CIs. You can't please everyone.
Click to expand...

Are you sayin' that there are deaf people who'd think that I was too concessionary to the hearin' world for bein' okay with deaf adults gettin' CIs ? FYI, it's all about perspective. It's how deaf people like me view it, just because some hearin' people don't ACCEPT " deaf " the way deaf people are by changin' " deaf " baby to a hearin' baby. When I gave birth of my 4 children, I don't attempt to change them to deaf babies - oh, just because I am deaf. Gee, what's wrong with teachin' them sign language ? Hmm... I don't attempt to take them to a doctor and have doctor to remove their " hearin' " sounds to become deaf. I ACCEPTED all of my 4 hearin' children and it's my job to TEACH them signings. So far, they signed fluently. They are over the ages of 20 now. Of course, I don't attempt to please everyone. It's all about the baby, not adults/or parents. :)

Ok, here's a video about perspective between deaf and hearin' :

Different Perspective Between Deaf and Hearing «
 
Tousi said:
I'm still wondering if that would be legal. I have the feeling it would NOT be, tho...but I'd still like to know...
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It has allready been done. Years ago by 2 lesbian Deaf woman in Canada I believe.
So, nothing new there... Go ahead J.
 
Maria said:
Yeah, but where's the baby's rights to make the decisions on his/her own, not parents' ? I feel that the parents don't love deaf babies by changin' them to become hearing babies - I mean, how come they don't ACCEPT " deaf " the way the baby was born with ? I believe in NATURAL. When the baby understands the words or comprehend things around the baby as she/he gets older, then the parents can INTRODUCE this CI to her/him and ask questions about it.
Click to expand...
The decision is up to the parents. WHEN the choice has been made by the parents, the child will benefit when the operation is done as soon as possible. Before the age of 3-4 years. That age is still too young to ask the child.
And please do not assume that "we" do not love our child. That kind of ""slap in the face" is really inappropriate for a parents that heared that the child is deaf. Close to every parent of a deaf child is hearing, and it is NATURAL for parents to give their children hearing as well. Especially since the world around the family is hearing as well.

Again, your suggestion of "waiting untill the child understands" is taking away opportunities. That's why implantation is best done as soon as possible. And that does not mean that the option to stop using CI is not there later. That is very well possible.

Maria said:
This will also give me the idea here : Some schools have their sign language classes, right ? And, hearin' students can learn it from schools by earnin' credits. It is a rewardin' without causin' death or illnesses. BUT, with havin' CI thru surgery - it is highly risk and it could cause death or illnesses. That's like if, it replaces a donor in patient's body and, then it reacts - couldn't accept it in a patient's body because it don't work or compatible. This patient could get sick or die. Same idea....
Click to expand...
The "hugh risk..... causing death and illness" is one of those "fear-myths". Based on nothing.

Soo... it's best to leave the decisions to that child when that child gets older. It will make the parents to feel more safer, because if the parents leave it to the child, then this will make the parents to feel without regrets or causin' complications. Show some care and be thoughtful for the child.
Maria said:


It's up to child if, this will make this child HAPPY or not. It's not the parents' happiness - because, THAT CI are not ON the parents.
Click to expand...
Waiting for the child to decide is a choice as well. Making the child grow up deaf.!!. And there's nothing wrong with that. As long as one realises that that is also a decision that is being made for the child.

Again, waiting for the child to decide is taking away opportunities to hear. Without the childs permission!!
 
Tousi said:
I'm still wondering if that would be legal. I have the feeling it would NOT be, tho...but I'd still like to know...
Click to expand...

Re-asking my question from the closed thread: How are the parents making their hearing child deaf?
 
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