faire_jour

If a child is profoundly deaf since birth and you wait until they are old enough to decide, the expected outcomes are not the same. The person will have very little chance of being able to understand spoken language through listening. A child implanted under 2 has a very good chance on the other hand. By waiting you are making it less successful.

Deafness

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Mrs Bucket

FJ, that's where you got too cocky.

No I don't agree with every point you made.

Each child has their learning manner and it is just not fair to assume each child is the same.

Not one size fits all hence the tabula rasa philosophy; treasure each child (Deaf or hearing) for who she/he is.


FJ, you chose to make your daughter's life public; please don't come to us complaining about this "blogosphere" harassment. Have you for once asked Miss Kat for her own permission if you could make her own private life a public expose about your CI belief?

Mrs Bucket

The child's voice box does not develop until they are a little bit over a year old. Why would a parent want to spend so much time focusing on using apparatus such as the CI to communicate with their child when they could use ASL to develop a strong bond at birth.

Implanting a child under 2 has a good chance does not guarantee you success, ASL does.

KristinaB

And---you can start ASL from birth and the child can, not all, but some or most, will pick it up by 6 months of age. I have a friend in Missouri who, because of her father's hearing loss, as each of her 6 children were born, with 1 set of twins, she was signing to them and speaking from day one. All of them were repeating signs to her by 5 & 6 months of age. The twins have been found to be deaf, they are now 18 months and according to the doctors, with ASL they have a vocabulary of over 1000 words and can sign full sentences. How many 18 month old hearing or implanted children can do that?

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faire_jour

Not complaining, simply explaining. I wanted to be perfectly clear that I do not take the things people say here and discuss them other places. I actually think that is pretty scummy.

Mrs Bucket

This is why I keep emphasizing to you, FJ, self-control is a must.

Last year, you had Miss Kat as your signature and some of us were quite uncomfortable with you sharing explicit details with your little girl staring at us from the signature.

You understand why self-control is very important; it is the only way we can control who uses our information especially when it involves those wee children who rely on us to be their voice(s) of reason.

Bottesini

I can point out that my eight month old hearing granddaughter can sign "hello" repeatedly for 30 minutes at a time. It gets very tiring.

I wonder really what we will converse about and her signing vocabulary at 18 months. Of course she lives with hearing parents. She gets some sign input from her mother, but most from me and I don't see her everyday.

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deafdyke

We're not saying that oral-Ci parents are evil. We are saying that they are very misinformed, and in many cases are still grieving the " loss" of a "healthy normal" kid.
That really is a big part of the attraction of oral only. That oral only kids don't "need" special needs stuff. They even push it that way. Look at an ad for auditory verbal programs. They really emphasize the fact that they don't use sign, cued speech or even speechreading!
We are saying that in a lot of cases, the communication decision was based on not what was best for the kid......but rather b/c oral advocates paint oral only as some sort of glorious utopia that will allow 100% access to the hearing world. Oral training does allow quite a bit of access, but it doesn't generally allow 100% access. Look at all the oral sucesses who still have significent social emotional issues.(and it IS a HUGE bugaboo. even many of the academic superstars still have HUGE social emoltional issues!). I support oral training 100%. I think it's a wonderful tool. I also support the parents who introduced both ASL and speech, and let their kid chose. I just really think that many of the parents who go " we can just use speech speech speech and everything will be fine" are very naive and extremely oral chauvistic.

KristinaB

Yeah - these kids are all in a hearing family and only have a grandfather who visits that is very hard of hearing. The mother (who is the daughter of the hoh man) wanted to make sure that when her father lost it all and ha's couldn't help anymore, that he would be able to communicate with all of his grandchildren. Kind of like you and your grandkids. These twins ask their older sisters and brother what they did in school and sign what they are eating. At church they also signed their prayers. The mother is trying to make sure that they all use both oral and sign. the older kids do it at school all day and the other kids think it's neat. In this way, more and more hearing children in that town are being exposed to ASL or PSE.

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Bottesini

So right now between us we have shown it can happen , it should just spread.

Plus where I live now there are programs where the hearing students in public school that are deaf magnet schools, are also taught ASL to make sure everybody can communicate and interact.

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Steel X

I am extremely insulted with what the father has stated according to the article.

It shows me that such people like them just don't want to have any patience learning about how to live with deaf people, the deaf culture, and learning sign language with them. they just want him to be "hearing" like the rest of them without any deaf culture related stuff and wanting him to go to normal schools. normal schools? wow, definitely not a good idea to say that term...

I'll tell you what's really stupid about this:

The baby is way too young.

The CI should be based on the child's decision, not the parents.

The father saying "normal" as he obviously has no idea what it is like to be deaf or lacking respect to the deaf culture.

I was born deaf, and my mom respected my decision that I do not want to wear an CI even thou she wanted me to but she still accepted me as her son, no matter what anyway.

why can't they accept their kids who they truly are is seriously beyond me. Even I know one girl whose parents NEVER say a word to her due to her deafness and they have no communication whatsoever it is pretty sad that she don't really know anything about her parents as the parents don't know anything about their deaf daughter and just treated her like she's stupid or whatever...the parents are the ones acting stupid because there are obviously ways to communicate with deaf people, and I guess they are just plain lazy or dont wanna accepting the fact that shes deaf or whatever so yeah they are just stupid.

Just the other day I was truly insulted when I know a friend of mine has a mother saying something at work who helps with people with disabilities getting jobs or whatever saying to the clients or employeers something like, "I know how you feel...I have a daughter who is deaf and a son who have ADD."

Seriously, her daughter, as my friend actually seems to be doing just fine. she has graduated from college last year and worked with horses all her life and made alot of good friends and is living independently. I don't see how she would dare say something so insulting against her daughter.

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KristinaB

I found out in an email from my ASL/PSE instructor, that the reason why all the teachers are taking his classes is because the public school system here in Palm Beach County will be offering ASL classes for as young as 1st grade and in all grades. I local school for special needs children will be closing down due to funding cuts and the kids will be mainstreamed, so the school system wants to prepare themselves. There will be deaf, hoh, severely handicapped (wheelchair and machines), crippled, and down's syndrome children all getting mainstreamed or their families will send them to other areas for special schools.

Head Start is also seeing more and more deaf and hoh children here in Palm Beach County.

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faire_jour

Why is the child "too young"? Can you expand on why that is? How can a child be too young to hear?

I agree that it is terrible when parents don't learn ASL for their child. Disgusting. But, devil's advocate here, wouldn't the situation have been HELPED if she had a CI and some oral skills? Then the family could have communicated at least a little....just a thought.

Mrs Bucket

FJ, why do you feel the need to fix what is not considered as broken?

Why do you see this as a situation when I see this as a part of life?

Oral skills, communication.. how come it has to be the wee child that has to accommodate for her parents? Her parents are supposed to accommodate for her by using ASL, a natural gestural, visual and spatial language that enhances language processes.

It baffles me how society expects a baby to accommodate everybody by being implanted with a CI rather than use ASL, a beautiful yet non-invasive language.

faire_jour

When did I EVER say that parents shouldn't learn ASL and bring language to their child?? I have repeated again and again that every child with a hearing loss should have ASL. I wrote a long post about exactly what I say to new parents. Why does everyone choose to ignore that?

Yes, I believe that having the ability to communicate with people in the language and mode of the majority is useful. Are there people that don't?

KristinaB

I thinks it's more, why use an invasive procedure when there is ASL until the child is older?

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faire_jour

1st, they should use ASL even when the child is older and hasa CI.
2nd, if you wait it doesn't work as well! Why would you wait and put the much older child through "an invasive procedure" for something that will not provide access to language, maybe enviromental sounds, and (if implanted as a non-verbal teen) will likely become a non-user. That seems much more illogical.

Mrs Bucket

WRONG!

They should use ASL when the child is an infant before implanted.

This is where you are illogical in your thinking-process. This is where you tout that children should be exposed to ASL after being implanted and at an older age.

This is where your thinking is very flawed, FJ.

KristinaB

As has been said before - not all CI's work. That's all I will say about this.

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Mrs Bucket

ASL has been proven to work best than CIs.

With ASL, you are able to express yourself with classifiers, metaphors, mouth morphemes, NMM, NMS and so on.

With the CI, you need to differentiate between sounds to identify happiness, laughter, joy, anger and facial expressions are much different when it comes with sounds.

Yes, I am a strong ASL advocate and I do not hide it.

KristinaB

I understand that - I just don't think a small child should be implanted. It my own personal opinion and I hate being attacked over it.

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faire_jour

No, I said they should STILL use ASL after they are implanted. I have been perfectly clear- ALL CHILDREN WITH ANY HEARING LOSS SHOULD BE GIVEN ASL, BOTH AS A 1ST LANGUAGE AND CONTINUING EVEN AFTER THEY ACQUIRE ANY OTHER LANGUAGES OR MODES OF COMMUNICATION.

You are reading something that isn't there. My view has been expressed over and over, through my posts and clearly through the choices I have made for my own child.

Mrs Bucket

I am with you, a small child should not be implanted.

Any child shouldn't be implanted just to accommodate society's issues.

I often wish some members followed my POV - "Dont attack the poster, question the POV and leave as friends."

Just hang in there and remember to stand by your beliefs as they make you for who you are.

Mrs Bucket

Hostile, aren't we dear?

What about before! Did you teach Miss Kat ASL before she was implanted or did you wait until after she was implanted?

Frisky Feline

You have perfect wordings for everything. I rather express myself to a life rather than analyzing on the sound of using voice properly with aids for the rest of life.

Mrs Bucket

That.. you just said it. I'd would rather express myself freely than constantly work on the pronunciations, no thanks!

TXgolfer

So what???? I can tell you now that if I found as an adult that my parents risked my life with surgery just so I could speak more clearly I would be pissed. How does that conversation even go? Me

Me: Mom, dad you risked my life and potentiallv debilitating side effrcts just so I could speak like the neighbor's kids??? I could have ended up with a lifetime of vertigo and never enjoyed Six Flags or 3D movies or driving on long road trips.

Mom and Dad: Well son that was a risk we were willing to take.

Lighthouse77

I don't know about other people, but I never experienced vertigo due to my CI

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TXgolfer

Not all do, but it is listed as a potential problem on the FDA web site. I posted the whole page earlier in this thread.

shel90

FJ, the whole point is that deaf people are the ones who have to conform to being hearing and if we don't, we get discriminated. Heck, even many of us who have done everything the hearing way still get discriminated, get treated inferior and oppression. We are saying "Enough is enough...respect ASL and Deaf people's voices and our experiences."

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