SxyPorkie

Deafdyke.... leave sweetmind out ... she is not here to fend for herself.. so hush up....

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rick48

Great post Kayla. You seem to really have a handle on what's going on with your daughter. Good luck, there are a lot of resources around. We found as we went along that deaf adults were the most patient and honest. They had no agenda and it was not about comparing your child with their child but giving the benefit of their experiences. Actually, they were the most firm in their belief that a ci would benefit our daughter.
Rick

Endymion

In light of the recent "colorful" discussion, here's a good question that comes to mind.

How many people here who identify as a proponent of residential education will not only accept but also encourage implantation?

Additionally . . .

How many people here who identify as a proponent of pediatric implantation will not only accept but also encourage development of a "D"eaf identity, ASL, and such?

I'm interested in seeing how many people are willing to strafe both sides, because I'm wondering how many of us are polarized.

shel90

The residential school where I work at has a CI program now where we use both spoken English and ASL to meet the children's auditority needs.

Most babies here in MD get their hearing screened and if they are identified with hearing losses, they are referred to the audologists and that is usually where the suggestion of CIs occurs. That happens before the child or the parents meet with representatives from the residential schools so I dont see how the residential school would have a chance to encourage implants. I think our place is to be neutral but to offer both ASL and spoken language so the children can get the best of both languages.

However, we have an audologist who is deaf with bi-lateral CIs..yes, working at the residential school.

Is that a good or bad thing?

__________________
~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

deafdyke

AMEN!!!!! Excellent post! Most of us here, are very pro-oral skills.......but being anti one tool isn't being militant.
,] No, we don't have any extremely audist parents, but we do have parents who aren't exactly eager for their kids to learn Sign, as a tool or a second language. Those are the parents who think "Oh my child doesn't need something that's speshal needs! Yahoo! Guess we don't need Sign!" Those parents aren't exactly audist, but they are very ableist. And there are probaly a loto of parents who lurk here. I mean we STILL have a lot of people regarding ASL as something "speshal needs", rather then as a fun interesting tool.

rick48

As a parent who raised an oral child, I have to tell you that you are way off base if you think that is the thought process parents go through. Briefly, while we made a decision to raise our daughter orally, we never ruled out sign as an option but in her case, once she got her ci her language development just exploded and never stoped. Also, whenever signs were introduced to her in therapy, she just had no interest in them, she wanted to hear the words not see them. At that point in time, what needs she would require later in school was furthest from our minds but once she reached school we fought for all the special needs she deserved.

kayla123

Well i understand that everyone here is posting about about their own personal expierences and that is why i come to these sites to learn more about dhh people since i never had any knowledge about deaf people until my daughter was born. I understand that Kayla is still young and even though she is doing fine now i can't predict what will happen in the future. I pay very close attention to her actions and i constantly keep in contact with her teachers to make sure she is doing ok. I am not one of those "You have to talk or your not going to make it" parents. I personally think that speech is a very usefull tool to have but that dose'nt mean i am knocking sign. I know that sign is just as usefull and i started introducing it to her and she seems to be very interested in learning it. I don't have blinders on, things happen, equipment fail and don't think i'm nuts but the paranoid part of me thinks, what if a war or something like that were to happen and Kayla would have no access to batteries. These are some of the things that actually run through my head, so believe me i know the importance of sign not just as a language but as a necessity. I dont go only by what the pros say, i go by my instinct as a mother who will do whatever it takes to ensure my daughters happiness and well being. It just seems to me that whenever something positive is being said about the CI, there is always a negitive response in return. Kayla loves coming home and showing me how well she did in school and i can't help but share that. She gets so excited and when i see that spark in her eyes i know i made the right choice for her.

rick48

Endymion,

From the time our daughter was first diagnosed, we have been actively involed in the oral deaf community. Our daughter was around deaf adults and she had friends who were deaf from when she was an infant. It has always been a part of her life and continues to be today.
Rick

deafdyke

rick.....that is AWESOME. I know there ARE kids out there who are introduced to both, and they themselves chose speech, and who rejected Sign, on their own terms.
I (and most other dhh activists) have NO beef whatsoever with parents who are openminded and who decide to do a "whatever works" methodology.
kayla123, if we had MORE parents like you and rick, I don't even think that the communication wars would even exist.
However, there are still many experts who push oral only at all costs, and or who think that oral only is some sort of grand high glorious utopia.

shel90

Kayla..I didnt mean to appear negative about your daughter. If it looked that way, that was not my intention.

Anyways..Rick, Kayla, and other parents who are members...I think what u are doing is great. U are exposing your children to both and making sure that their language development does not become severely delayed. I just wish the parents out there that I have met shared your views. Many of the parents view ASL as a another method of English for deaf children who are low functioning so due to that view, they shy away from exposing it to their children for fear that it will make their children less than normal. Due to their denial or views, their children who dont pick up on oral language falls so severely behind that it is not even funny. When they finally realize or when the schools their children go to tell them that there is no use in using oral language with them and to send them to the deaf schools. The problem with that is the children come to our schools from other schools are usually 3 or 4 years delayed in language and I am wondering why does this still happen? Were the specialist lax in recognizing that the deaf children werent acquiring language? Yes, we have deaf children who have attended our schools since they were babies and they are doing fine with literacy skills but it is a small number as opposed to the transferred students. We even had one middle school girl with a CI who just came to our school a year ago who was reading and writing at the 2nd grade level. She had no cognitive disabilities so it just puzzles me and makes me furious. My goal is to reach out to those hearing people whether they have deaf children or not that ASL is just as important as spoken language. A lot of people, even parents of deaf children, could be reading our posts and not even sign up to be members so whenever I say things about parents, it is not always going to be about the parents here in AD. If so, I will ephasize that.

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~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

shel90

How old is your daughter? I find that interesting cuz my 17 month old son is hearing and he hasnt "spoken" his first word but expresses himself using several signs. That sentence just made me realize that about my son. He is in a spoken environment all day while I work and in an signing environment in the evenings and weekends. He signs to everyone even our family members who dont know sign so they are learning from him. My mother in law keeps bringing up her concerns that he will be delayed in language and I told her that he is developing language through signing and she said that is impossible. I guess she doesnt get it. *sighs*

Just thought it is interesting how young children can prefer one language over another. I wonder if the same happens in multi-language families like Spanish and English-speaking families?

__________________
~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

rick48

Shel,

My daughter is now 20 so I am reaching back in time remembering how it was but she just never liked to get clues visually but auditorily. Even in school she learns best auditorily, yes great for a profoundly deaf child, not visiually. Although she has always been a phenominal lip reader but when she was starting out, her s&l therapist would always introduce the sounds with either signs or visual clues but she would say the sound but never the sign.

jillio

The behavior that prompts the comment is growing stale!

jillio

Yeah, I know. Someone who is very defensive twisted remarks and came up with that interpretation.

jillio

[quote=rick48;758229]That's fairly self explanatory if you will go back and read the posts. Exception is quantified quite clearly.

jillio

Curriculum wasn't mentioned. And the majority of Deaf schools in operation today are held to the same state mandated standards as any other public school. The private Deaf schools often have even higher standards than the public schools.

jillio

Exactly. Since the concept of the "least restrictive environment" is interpreted to equal "mainstreaming" the majority of students sent to a Deaf school are those that have been mainstream failures, either academically, or behaviorally. That places the Deaf schools in the position of functioning as remedial placement to make up for inadequacies in the mainstream. How many of the mainstream students would have thrived academically and socially had they been placed in a Deaf educational environment from the start? You cannot blame the Deaf schools for the mainstream failures. The heart of it all is the failure to recognize deafness as a cultural and linguistic difference and that placement in the mainstream, where deaf students are restricted from effective communication with peers and teachers is the MOST restrictive environment, not the LEAST.

shel90

Oh gosh..LRE...a good idea for other children with special needs but a bad idea for deaf kids. BAD idea! Even with interpretors, deaf children still are not getting LRE...

__________________
~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

jillio

This, of course is based on what I have personally observed at one particular Deaf school, so it isn't really generalizable; but the school my son attended had several students who were implanted, many of them pediatric implantations. All of these children also signed, and all of these parents also signed. The ones that I am still in contact with three years later are very connected to the Deaf community, use ASL as their primary mode of communication, but are capable of and will code switch to PSE or speech when necessary to facilitate communication. If you ask them how they ID, they will tell you as Deaf.

I personally believe that these young adults have been able to find their identity and become comfortable with it because they spent those years in an environment that was supportive and challenging (the Deaf school). The parents have been allowed to see first hand the benefits to their children, and as a consequence, support the kids id as Deaf.

Many, many children who were raised as oral, and had relatively successful academic careers through high school have experiences in college or after their education that places them in a position, for the first time, of having actual contact with the deaf community and their language. These are people that have been judged as oral successes, have been able to function in a hearing world, yet when they are finally exposed tothe Deaf community and sign language experience a great sense of having missed out on something alll of their lives. These are the deaf adults that make comments such as, "My parents gave me a good life and did everything they could to make things easier for me, but I always felt different. I never felt that I fit in." When they find the Deaf community and the language that is theirs by birthright, they find the part of their identity that makes them whole. This board is full of posters who were not raised with exposure to the signing Deaf community, yet have found it as adults. And they are all grateful for having done so. Why do we continue to insist that our deaf children do not need this experience? Why are we, as parents willing to settle for providing our children with less than is required for optimal development? It seems that we are willing to settle for any superficial sign of success--my child speaks, my child doesn't need sign, my child is reading well in public school--and ignore that these are only surface measurements? We do this over and over with our kids, and then, when the kids grow up and gravitate toward the signing Deaf community, or marry another deaf individual, we are surprized. Wake up, people. Deaf children are people first, deaf second. They have the same socialization and emotional needs as any other child. They need acceptance, and self esteem, and the message that they are valuable, and their value is not dependent upon their ability to superficially appear to be something they are not. They need to develop their identity at an age appropriate time, and not when they are 25 or more years old. Without it, no other form of therapy or assistive devise will make any changes in the lives of these kids. Being able to speak, having a CI, using HA--none of it makes for a happy well adjusted adult when the focus is always on the deafness because then the focus is always on what is missing.

shel90

and many of these students are bright too!!! By stating that they are "below than average intelligence" is saying that my brother's intelligence level is lower than the general population. I think he is a lot smarter than many of us to have to pick up a new language at the age of 5 so quickly in a year and then achieve adequate literacy skills. If he was "below than average" then he wouldnt be in grad school at a HEARING college!

__________________
~Shel~

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." -George Santayana

jillio

Kids have an uncanny knack for intuiting context. Like, a child who is exposed to Spanish at home will speak Spanish in that environment, yet will speak fluent English in school. You son knows that sign is the language of his home. He's a bit young to get the connection between thelanguage that is spoken in your home and the language htat is spoken elsewhere. He only knows that when he signs, he is able to connect with others and make his needs and thoughts known. He is certainly not language delayed, nor will he be. He is grasping the true purpose of language--communication and connection to others.

jillio

Right. And when that is finally recognized by the hearing educators, and the kid is transferred to a deaf environment, it is the deaf school that gets blamed!

jillio

Exactly. And that is why I find the too smart, or not smart enough mind set insulting!

shel90