Trying to understand what it's like for my son

fact of the matter is when u go to an interview and you have excellent speech they wont even assume ur deaf. Just that you have an accent. I guess jobs differ from when your younger to older. I dont even tell 95% of my employers im hard of hearing and ive goten jobs no problem.
 
lucas said:
fact of the matter is when u go to an interview and you have excellent speech they wont even assume ur deaf. Just that you have an accent. I guess jobs differ from when your younger to older. I dont even tell 95% of my employers im hard of hearing and ive goten jobs no problem.
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Hahahaha...wont assume that I am deaf? Wrong wrong..if I dont let them know that I am deaf, they would think I am retarded for not being able to understand them half of the time. I would rather them know about my deafness than think I am with stupid which in the long run, probably doesnt matter because historically, deaf has been equated to dumb anyway.


The audists attitudes of society needs to change...not us. I refuse to work harder to change myself into a hearing person after spending 20 plus years of hell trying to do that to make f***cking hearing people happy. They can either accept me for who I am or kiss my ass.
 
It's all really a moot point here, as he has this little son with malformed cochleas and is still hoping to implant him.

There is this huge push to use CI whether it is the appropriate course or not.

I know too many people who are dizzy and sick with migraines from CI that their parents decided they should have... :(
 
lucas said:
When will he be aware of sound? probably as soon as he can hear it. Wether he has some hearing left or from the first time u turn on his hearing aid etc. Now when will he realize the importance of sound? The importance of being able to verbally comunicate? that is a much more important question. This all depends on how you handle your childs education. Im no parent. In fact im only a 20 year old who can only offer you his perspective on how his family handled him.

When i was diagnosed with a hearing disability it was recomended to my mother that i be placed in a school for kids with special needs. My mom fought hard to get me into a public elementary school and succeeded. So there i was, a deaf child thrown to the sharks. Or so everyone thought. The truth is i excelled in elementary school. I got great marks, was the captain of sports teams and won speech contest! and i was quite the ladies man ;). Doesnt seem to bad for a deaf kid huh? Elementary school was a blast and I owe it all to my mother.

DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYONE WHO SAYS ANYTHING LIKE " your kids happy being deaf, teach him ASL and he'll be fine" That infuriates me to the max! How ignorant someone must be to say that! How could you possibly shut such a huge door on a child that isn't old enough to realize the importance of being able to verbally communicate in todays world."you cant teach an old dog new tricks". If you wait till ur child is 10 to have him start speaking chances are his speech wont be nearly as good as it could have been if you pushed it on him at a young age. Your child's speech may not be up to par with someone who can hear well but if the job interview, when he is 20, is between two equally qualified people one of whom cannot speak at all who do you think is getting the job? Yes it its wrong to discriminate but the truth is its going to happen. Alot of people dont even realize im deaf. They think i have an accent! I owe this to the fact that my mom dragged me to the speech therapist i hated so much when i was a kid.

Now we hit high-school ,the days where i truly began to realize the importance of communication, things change. Interaction between peers becomes more and more social and less and less physical like when we were kids. Instead of playing tag with 10 friends, we are sitting in a busy cafeteria yelling over each other. Needless to say it makes following a conversation impossible for a deaf/hoh person. My parents didn't expose me to the deaf world at all. I grew up feeling like i was the only young person who was deaf and the only other people who had the slightest idea how i was feeling were old farts. I slowly became more isolated and fought depression constantly. I had no one to talk to and would keep my feelings bottled up until every once in a while id break down and cry on my mothers shoulder.

That was my parents mistake. They didn't realize they closed the door to the deaf world on me. They were so busy trying to keep me oral they didn't stop to think that i might feel isolated. Now that i am more mature i am starting to seek out other hard of hearing people in my area but i cant shake the norms. I cant see myself signing in public with other deaf people it weirds me out. Its funny how i can be such a hypocrite but it was how i was raised. I often hate myself for being deaf and am still currently fighting constant depression. A normal kid stuck with a couple of broken ears. A mind with so much to offer no one to easily communicate with...

My point is open as many doors for your child as possible. I thank my parents for having me mainstreamed because i can function quite easily in society. I thank them for pushing me to use my ears and voice as much as possible as a child. I thank them for telling me i am normal. Now you can learn from their mistakes as well. Have your kid learn both the spoken language of english as well as ASL. Expose your child to the deaf community so when he is older he does not face the same feelings of isolation as i do.

I hope this helps you to understand how ur child may be feeling one day in the future
lucas
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Lucas, NOBODY is saying "go totally ASL voice off." We're saying yes pursue speech therapy. Did you know almost all dhh kids get a VERY hefty dose of speech therapy? We're saying DO BOTH. You just said you feel isolated and all......yes you have some access to the hearing world....but oral skills do not give free and unfettered access to the hearing world. If you'd learned ASL and gone to deaf school, you would have realized that OMG Deaf culture is just....AMAZING. I suggest you apply to NTID or Gally and discover yourself as a Deaf guy.
 
I am the mother of a deaf child and I take him to speech therapy, even if I chose not to get him CI. One of the reasons we decided not to go that route is that it was quite hard for us to get out of that obsession on "what he can hear" with his aids... We worked hard on us, not him, to let go that dreamy imaginary hearing (or at least hard of hearing) child we had in our mind - which is NOT our real child! Once we got out of that, we realized there's more to do with our child than worrying on how much he does/doesn't hear. Giving him CI would have some cons we don't want to risk now - one of them is that we'd be trapped in that obsession again. We don't want to loose more precious time of his cognitive and emotional growth focusing on his hearing. He needs and deserves more. Sign language is one of the thing to do, but not the only one... We have rich and busy days with both of our children, hearing and deaf.

Leave that apart, I'll make him go to speech therapy at least until he's 7 or 8 yo. If it will become too hard and painful for him, we'll change therapist or may consider to do it at home, but I want him to have a chance to develop speech skills. Which doesn't mean it will be a tragedy if he doesn't... He'll go to school, play sports, do some art, do speech therapy... We are well aware he could turn out as an adult who doesn't like studying, hates sports or art, and doesn't talk at all. That's ok. But as long as he's a child, it's part of our job to give him many experiences to choose from, always paying attention to his reactions to change/stop what's becoming too heavy for him. We are not pushing speech on him more than we are pushing all other activities,and we try to make all this work as interesting to him as possible.

It's hard for me to explain since english is not my first language, but once I got him CI, I'd want it to WORK. It's surgery after all. I wouldn't be satisfied with what he incidentally learned, it wouldn't be easy to accept that he has little benefit from it. I would want it to work at its best and give him a huge benefit and great speech skills, because if it doesn't, what did I do that all for?? So yes, in that case, I would be probably forcing him to become as hearing as possible.

That's part of why I choose NOT to.

Of course that's just ME - but if you are considering CI for your kid, consider what exactly are you looking for when you do that. Because it's easy to say "I accept my son's deafness", but as far as I know, you never do. We are hearing. It's not our fault, but we costantly have to work on ourselves to really accept our children' deafness, day after day... It's never "done". At least, that's what I see, not only in myself and my husband but in other hearing parents around us. The pressure on us is so heavy! It's easier when the child is little, but while he grows up, it will become harder to figure out about his needs and adapt to them. Deaf adults are indispensable for us.

You are doing a great thing using ASL, go ahead on that, but don't focus on one thing alone... Work on yourself. That's always my advice, maybe because that's what I feel I need so hard to do!:lol:
 
deafdyke said:
Lucas, NOBODY is saying "go totally ASL voice off." We're saying yes pursue speech therapy. Did you know almost all dhh kids get a VERY hefty dose of speech therapy? We're saying DO BOTH. You just said you feel isolated and all......yes you have some access to the hearing world....but oral skills do not give free and unfettered access to the hearing world. If you'd learned ASL and gone to deaf school, you would have realized that OMG Deaf culture is just....AMAZING. I suggest you apply to NTID or Gally and discover yourself as a Deaf guy.
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ive been lookin into that but i know no ASL and im afraid i wont be able to afford to live there due to money being tight these days. It definitly would benefit me though
 
Great great post, Messymama. Your honesty ia so appreciated. Too often, many pparents here havent been honest with Deaf people and for that, you will be more respected. :)
 
lucas said:
ive been lookin into that but i know no ASL and im afraid i wont be able to afford to live there due to money being tight these days. It definitly would benefit me though
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From what I know, they do have a program for the non-signers at Gallaudet. However, the tuition fee is doubled since you would be considered an international student.

Although, it's entirely up to you on whether what you want to do with your life. No one can tell you what you can and what you cannot do.
 
ive also been told george brown i think? or maybe humber? has a strong deaf community in its school. Either way the path im on currently is not working out for me. Depression, isolation, trouble with the law i need to do something positive. Gallaudet would be nice. A fresh start. i shall browse their website and talk to my parents about it. I just know my friends are gona tell me u dont need to go to a school for deaf people and im going to feel bad about admiting all my weaknesses that they are unaware of.
 
lucas said:
ive also been told george brown i think? or maybe humber? has a strong deaf community in its school. Either way the path im on currently is not working out for me. Depression, isolation, trouble with the law i need to do something positive. Gallaudet would be nice. A fresh start. i shall browse their website and talk to my parents about it. I just know my friends are gona tell me u dont need to go to a school for deaf people and im going to feel bad about admiting all my weaknesses that they are unaware of.
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You cannot let your friends tell what to do. George Brown College has a considerate number of students who are deaf and hard of hearing. I believe Mohawk College in Hamilton has a program for the deaf. I think it's called Deaf Empowerment Program. However, I could be mistaken but I think it's designed for people who are fluent in ASL. It's also somewhat of a academic upgrading program. So I don't think that one may be a good fit for you. George Brown College probably would be more ideal.

I don't know anything about Humber College though. Maybe someone else here does.
 
yeah i know its just the fact i grew up with these people and they see me as a normal guy and i like the idea of being seen as normal as opposed to the deaf guy. Its not even school, i just need to meet people my age in the same situation. No luck yet
 
lucas said:
yeah i know its just the fact i grew up with these people and they see me as a normal guy and i like the idea of being seen as normal as opposed to the deaf guy. Its not even school, i just need to meet people my age in the same situation. No luck yet
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First, don't ever think of yourself being abnormal. You are perfectly normal, you're just deaf. People come from all walks of life. They are all different in their own ways.

Obviously, you feel that you are missing something in your life. A lot of deaf and hard of hearing people go through this particular phase. It's usually at the beginning of their adulthood that they start to explore life on a deeper level. You're 20, which is a common age for someone like you to start exploring and re-assessing their identities.

I think you're in for a big eye-opening experience once you find it.
 
Wirelessly posted (droid)

Messymama, your child is lucky. Your child will grow up with self acceptance. Not even all hearing people get that. Love the kid you're lucky enough to have.
 
shel90 said:
Hahahaha...wont assume that I am deaf? Wrong wrong..if I dont let them know that I am deaf, they would think I am retarded for not being able to understand them half of the time. I would rather them know about my deafness than think I am with stupid which in the long run, probably doesnt matter because historically, deaf has been equated to dumb anyway.


The audists attitudes of society needs to change...not us. I refuse to work harder to change myself into a hearing person after spending 20 plus years of hell trying to do that to make f***cking hearing people happy. They can either accept me for who I am or kiss my ass.
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I suppose we all have different experiences, then,
because I did exactly what Lucas did- with my barely visible impaired speech I also hid the fact I am HoH so I got a job without a hitch,
then it was too late to fire me as I proved my worth by then.

The second time around it was even easier since as an immigrant I blamed
my "mind fuzziness" on not speaking English :)

Fuzzy
 
hey, let's not bicker, alright?

The point is, we all have different experiences thru which we speak.

What I meant to say most of all is for the hearing parents to have all of
a sudden a deaf or HoH child is usually terrifying and confusing time ,
the deafness/HoH-ness is looked upon as something to be pitied and must-be-fixed at all cost,

rarely thought as something "normal" and "no big deal" - this is what I mainly meant,
of course not that being deaf per se is a picnic in a park,
(apart from the aforementioned differences in the adjustment to the lack
of sound since birth vs late deafened).

Hearing parents are always in a panic mode which is not helped by professionals as we well know.
What I wanted to explain to Bchamberlin is that it is perfectly fine to be deaf and continue to be deaf however that does not have to exclude access to speech and sound (if sound is possible)

My advice is, however, not to concentrate on making the baby hear because of the malformed cochlea of course.
As pro-CI as I am, this time even I say - drop the CI.

Make this baby fully DEAF.

I will repeat what I said to other parent not so long ago - research the net under deaf doctors, lawyers, actors, politicians etc- you will see it is available to deaf people.
Deaf doesn't mean it is "the end of the line". As long as you take care of simply your IQ - anything is possible for the deaf.

Fuzzy
 
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