Acoustic Characteristics of the Speech of Young Cochlear Implant Users

[shel90]

How do you really know what works for a particular child?? Almost all members here on AD have hearing parents, and many of us learned signs much later because we weren't introduced to sign language.

While spoken words are important so are sign language, Why can't they use both? from my understanding what's wrong with using all communications?

Are you a hearing parent? Do me a favor, why don't you turn down the volume on the TV so you can't hear it. How much can you understand of what they're saying? Would you be able to understand words and meanings by watching their lips and face?

Deaf people read lips everyday. Put yourself in those deaf people shoes, and You'll understand why we deaf people feel that sign language and spoken language are important, not because we are anti-oral. All it takes for a person to understand where we are coming from, feel our pains this is what we struggle half of our lives, it's time for hearing parents to start listening, I mean really listen. The real experts are deaf adults.

While deaf people are not all alike which I agree, but that doesn't mean they cannot use all communication options: / Oral Auditory / Verbal / Cued Speech / Total Communication and Sign Language They entitled to full communication access to avoid any delaying in their language.

That is what we are trying to tell those who are in favor for oral-only deaf ed for deaf children. Why oral only and take that risk with children becoming delayed in language is what I will never understand.

 

[shel90]

People believe what they want to believe. Particularly about their own child.

All this emphasis on CI's for *one child* in a family makes me worry about the remaining children. What are they, chopped liver?

Lantana

Exactly! I am there for those who have suffered from being in a restrictive environment like the oral-only programs. Like I said before just because some succeeded doesnt make it right to put deaf children's language development at risk like that. I guess to them, those who suffered are "chopped" liver. Who cares as long as their children succeeded? That is the message I am getting and it apalls me.

 

[shel90]

Like the one you play notetaker and interpreter for?


Good to show everyone how you really feel about mainstreamed kids?

Why dont u try teaching those kids who have suffered from the very programs u support? Try to teach them how to read and write at the ages of 6, 7, or 8 when their language level is at 2 years old. Then again, I dont see u willing to take that step anyway.


It is not about how we feel about the kids themselves..it is about how we feel about the kinds of approaches and practices that makes language inaccessible to them. Apparently, u do not understand that cuz your only focus is on the successful ones.

 

[Kaitin]

So if I want to be a member I must learn the secret handshake?

Do you know the history of ASL? How schools did not allow students to sign even to another deaf student so sign must be secret in the past?

In the past schools hearing students of deaf/HoH kids decided to force deaf/HoH kids to use speech and lipreading only and banned ASL/sign. Deaf teachers were not allowed to give opinions. Deaf/HoH kids signed in secret:

From The Case for Recognizing American Sign Language

Although there had been an undercurrent of resistance to sign language all along (just as some elements in our society today continue to show intolerance to languages other than English), that resistance became decidedly more pronounced during the Victorian period in the latter 19th century, when forces of oppressiveness and conformism seemed to hold the day. In the 1870s influential educators and thinkers like Horace Mann, Alexander Graham Bell, and other great "oralists" and "demutizers" advocated the overthrow of the "old-fashioned" asylums and the establishment of "progressive" schools in which the deaf would be taught to speak.

Resistance to sign culminated in 1880 at the infamous International Congress of Educators of the Deaf, held in Milan, Italy. With the deaf teachers in attendance excluded from voting, it was decided to proscribe the use of sign language in the schools.

What began as a well-intentioned effort to integrate the deaf into mainstream society by teaching them to speak (what good was it to educate the deaf, the reformers asked, if they couldn’t communicate with the rest of us?), soon evolved into a "fiercely oralist" tradition where signing of any sort was not tolerated. As recently as the early 1970s, deaf children in our schools had their hands slapped if they were caught signing to each other or to their hearing friends. (The result, naturally, was that they went on signing – behind their teachers’ backs.)

This decision, as interpreted by Lane and others, had tremendous impact on the social standing and status of the deaf in the Western world. One result was that teachers of the deaf who themselves were deaf lost their jobs. (Because they couldn’t hear, they couldn’t teach speech.) As Oliver Sacks points out in his review of Lane’s book, the proportion of deaf teachers dropped from 50% in 1850, to 25% in 1900, to 12% in 1960.

Another result, many have argued, was a dramatic deterioration in the overall education and literacy of the deaf. Because it takes a tremendous commitment in time and personal attention to teach the deaf to speak, the emphasis in the classroom shifts naturally from general education and critical thinking to speech.

And -

From the New York Times: New York to Teach Deaf in Sign Language, Then English

''Deaf children tended historically to be viewed as defective beings who needed to be fixed without regard to deaf children's preferred language, which is American Sign Language,'' said Russell Rosen, a Columbia University specialist in deaf education who prepared the 1996 report that went to Steven Sanders. ''Deaf children could not understand their hearing teachers, which has produced failure after failure.''

In 1867, all 26 schools for the deaf in the United States used A.S.L. By 1907, all 139 such schools had forbidden its use in an effort to make the deaf more like hearing people. Instead, they were taught to read lips or to speak.

And because ASL was forbidden sign was secret - just among deaf and not with hearing teachers and deaf students:

From University of Rochester: Signs of New Languages

under the urging of such notables in deaf education as Alexander Graham Bell, reformers turned to lipreading as a better way for deaf people to make their way in a hearing world. Sign was driven out of the schools.

It wasn't until the early 1970s that linguists, cognitive scientists, and educators took a new interest in ASL and began to study it as a language in its own right.

Despite its suppression, ASL had not disappeared but had simply gone underground, remaining a primary means of communication for many deaf people.

So ASL is a "secret handshake" only because deaf naturally use sign and in the past hearing people including teachers banned them so they signed in secret. Thinking about history I am proud of ASL and the deaf/HoH kids who signed in secret from hearing teachers and "secret handshake" is not a negative.

 

[shel90]

Do you know the history of ASL? How schools did not allow students to sign even to another deaf student so sign must be secret in the past?

In the past schools hearing students of deaf/HoH kids decided to force deaf/HoH kids to use speech and lipreading only and banned ASL/sign. Deaf teachers were not allowed to give opinions. Deaf/HoH kids signed in secret:

From The Case for Recognizing American Sign Language

Although there had been an undercurrent of resistance to sign language all along (just as some elements in our society today continue to show intolerance to languages other than English), that resistance became decidedly more pronounced during the Victorian period in the latter 19th century, when forces of oppressiveness and conformism seemed to hold the day. In the 1870s influential educators and thinkers like Horace Mann, Alexander Graham Bell, and other great "oralists" and "demutizers" advocated the overthrow of the "old-fashioned" asylums and the establishment of "progressive" schools in which the deaf would be taught to speak.

Resistance to sign culminated in 1880 at the infamous International Congress of Educators of the Deaf, held in Milan, Italy. With the deaf teachers in attendance excluded from voting, it was decided to proscribe the use of sign language in the schools.

What began as a well-intentioned effort to integrate the deaf into mainstream society by teaching them to speak (what good was it to educate the deaf, the reformers asked, if they couldn’t communicate with the rest of us?), soon evolved into a "fiercely oralist" tradition where signing of any sort was not tolerated. As recently as the early 1970s, deaf children in our schools had their hands slapped if they were caught signing to each other or to their hearing friends. (The result, naturally, was that they went on signing – behind their teachers’ backs.)

This decision, as interpreted by Lane and others, had tremendous impact on the social standing and status of the deaf in the Western world. One result was that teachers of the deaf who themselves were deaf lost their jobs. (Because they couldn’t hear, they couldn’t teach speech.) As Oliver Sacks points out in his review of Lane’s book, the proportion of deaf teachers dropped from 50% in 1850, to 25% in 1900, to 12% in 1960.

Another result, many have argued, was a dramatic deterioration in the overall education and literacy of the deaf. Because it takes a tremendous commitment in time and personal attention to teach the deaf to speak, the emphasis in the classroom shifts naturally from general education and critical thinking to speech.

And -

From the New York Times: New York to Teach Deaf in Sign Language, Then English

''Deaf children tended historically to be viewed as defective beings who needed to be fixed without regard to deaf children's preferred language, which is American Sign Language,'' said Russell Rosen, a Columbia University specialist in deaf education who prepared the 1996 report that went to Steven Sanders. ''Deaf children could not understand their hearing teachers, which has produced failure after failure.''

In 1867, all 26 schools for the deaf in the United States used A.S.L. By 1907, all 139 such schools had forbidden its use in an effort to make the deaf more like hearing people. Instead, they were taught to read lips or to speak.

And because ASL was forbidden sign was secret - just among deaf and not with hearing teachers and deaf students:

From University of Rochester: Signs of New Languages

under the urging of such notables in deaf education as Alexander Graham Bell, reformers turned to lipreading as a better way for deaf people to make their way in a hearing world. Sign was driven out of the schools.

It wasn't until the early 1970s that linguists, cognitive scientists, and educators took a new interest in ASL and began to study it as a language in its own right.

Despite its suppression, ASL had not disappeared but had simply gone underground, remaining a primary means of communication for many deaf people.

So ASL is a "secret handshake" only because deaf naturally use sign and in the past hearing people including teachers banned them so they signed in secret. Thinking about history I am proud of ASL and the deaf/HoH kids who signed in secret from hearing teachers and "secret handshake" is not a negative.

Vallee, Rick48, Cloggy, and Jackie..by supporting oral only deaf ed, u also support this view as well? The view that educators who are deaf themselves have no say and lose their jobs, that deaf children who have no oral skills but have high literacy skills as defective who needs to be fixed, the decline of literacy skills, and the forcing of ASL to go underground. That is the view I am violently against and oral-only deaf ed is part of that view.

THAT is what Jillo and I are against and yet, u call us anti-CI, pro-ASL ONLY, and against the oral or mainstreeamed children themselves? U are kidding me!

 

[shel90]

Do you know the history of ASL? How schools did not allow students to sign even to another deaf student so sign must be secret in the past?

In the past schools hearing students of deaf/HoH kids decided to force deaf/HoH kids to use speech and lipreading only and banned ASL/sign. Deaf teachers were not allowed to give opinions. Deaf/HoH kids signed in secret:

From The Case for Recognizing American Sign Language

Although there had been an undercurrent of resistance to sign language all along (just as some elements in our society today continue to show intolerance to languages other than English), that resistance became decidedly more pronounced during the Victorian period in the latter 19th century, when forces of oppressiveness and conformism seemed to hold the day. In the 1870s influential educators and thinkers like Horace Mann, Alexander Graham Bell, and other great "oralists" and "demutizers" advocated the overthrow of the "old-fashioned" asylums and the establishment of "progressive" schools in which the deaf would be taught to speak.

Resistance to sign culminated in 1880 at the infamous International Congress of Educators of the Deaf, held in Milan, Italy. With the deaf teachers in attendance excluded from voting, it was decided to proscribe the use of sign language in the schools.

What began as a well-intentioned effort to integrate the deaf into mainstream society by teaching them to speak (what good was it to educate the deaf, the reformers asked, if they couldn’t communicate with the rest of us?), soon evolved into a "fiercely oralist" tradition where signing of any sort was not tolerated. As recently as the early 1970s, deaf children in our schools had their hands slapped if they were caught signing to each other or to their hearing friends. (The result, naturally, was that they went on signing – behind their teachers’ backs.)

This decision, as interpreted by Lane and others, had tremendous impact on the social standing and status of the deaf in the Western world. One result was that teachers of the deaf who themselves were deaf lost their jobs. (Because they couldn’t hear, they couldn’t teach speech.) As Oliver Sacks points out in his review of Lane’s book, the proportion of deaf teachers dropped from 50% in 1850, to 25% in 1900, to 12% in 1960.

Another result, many have argued, was a dramatic deterioration in the overall education and literacy of the deaf. Because it takes a tremendous commitment in time and personal attention to teach the deaf to speak, the emphasis in the classroom shifts naturally from general education and critical thinking to speech.

And -

From the New York Times: New York to Teach Deaf in Sign Language, Then English

''Deaf children tended historically to be viewed as defective beings who needed to be fixed without regard to deaf children's preferred language, which is American Sign Language,'' said Russell Rosen, a Columbia University specialist in deaf education who prepared the 1996 report that went to Steven Sanders. ''Deaf children could not understand their hearing teachers, which has produced failure after failure.''

In 1867, all 26 schools for the deaf in the United States used A.S.L. By 1907, all 139 such schools had forbidden its use in an effort to make the deaf more like hearing people. Instead, they were taught to read lips or to speak.

And because ASL was forbidden sign was secret - just among deaf and not with hearing teachers and deaf students:

From University of Rochester: Signs of New Languages

under the urging of such notables in deaf education as Alexander Graham Bell, reformers turned to lipreading as a better way for deaf people to make their way in a hearing world. Sign was driven out of the schools.

It wasn't until the early 1970s that linguists, cognitive scientists, and educators took a new interest in ASL and began to study it as a language in its own right.

Despite its suppression, ASL had not disappeared but had simply gone underground, remaining a primary means of communication for many deaf people.

So ASL is a "secret handshake" only because deaf naturally use sign and in the past hearing people including teachers banned them so they signed in secret. Thinking about history I am proud of ASL and the deaf/HoH kids who signed in secret from hearing teachers and "secret handshake" is not a negative.[/QUOTE]

to that!

 

[Kaitin]

Where have I said CI is a miracle?

From Cloggy's thread "Experiences with my daughter":August 2005: One thing to mention.. she whispers. It's so great that when we start whispering to her, she lowers her voice as well. And of course, being the sceptic engineer I put my hand in front of my mouth just to make sure she wouldn't read my lips, but no problem, she understood it all. It's such a "miracle" and we're with her on the stage witnessing it. WOW.

---
From Cloggy's thread "Cochlear Implant Mends Lives"

Jillio writes "devise is marketed to hearing parents with the attitude of being a scientific miracle that will allow their child to integrate into hearing society without difficulty"

Cloggy replies "Maybe not fore some, but in a way it IS a miracle. "

---

Cloggy: Maybe you think CI is a miracle for your daughter. I don't think this is wrong - she is your daughter.

But about OTHER kids and parents and NOT Cloggy - I have no problem with a parent of kid with CI thinking CI is a miracle for his child IF the parent knows that 1) CI is not a miracle for everyone and 2) thinking CI is a miracle when deciding about CI probably is a huge mistake for most - many with CI say to have low expectations, not "miracle".

 

[shel90]

From Cloggy's thread "Experiences with my daughter":August 2005: One thing to mention.. she whispers. It's so great that when we start whispering to her, she lowers her voice as well. And of course, being the sceptic engineer I put my hand in front of my mouth just to make sure she wouldn't read my lips, but no problem, she understood it all. It's such a "miracle" and we're with her on the stage witnessing it. WOW.

---
From Cloggy's thread "Cochlear Implant Mends Lives"

Jillio writes "devise is marketed to hearing parents with the attitude of being a scientific miracle that will allow their child to integrate into hearing society without difficulty"

Cloggy replies "Maybe not fore some, but in a way it IS a miracle. "

---

Cloggy: Maybe you think CI is a miracle for your daughter. I don't think this is wrong - she is your daughter.

But about OTHER kids and parents and NOT Cloggy - I have no problem with a parent of kid with CI thinking CI is a miracle for his child IF the parent knows that 1) CI is not a miracle for everyone and 2) thinking CI is a miracle when deciding about CI probably is a huge mistake for most - many with CI say to have low expectations, not "miracle".

Good point Kaitin.

Cloggy, by using such words like this to describe the CIs, some parents who come across this forum who may read that comment may take your words literally so what happens if the CIs doesnt turn out to be the "miracle" they envisioned? What then?

U want to quelch all the misinformation about CIs? I have no problem with that. What I have a problem is when Jillo or others try to quelch misinformation about Deaf culure and ASL, you or others make belittling comments about us and falsely label us as this or that. Expect Jillo and I or others to quelch misinformation about calling CIs a miracle or ASL as not being needed. U cant expect to have it your way only.

 

[Cheri]

Maybe you think CI is a miracle for your daughter. I don't think this is wrong - she is your daughter.

But about OTHER kids and parents and NOT Cloggy - I have no problem with a parent of kid with CI thinking CI is a miracle for his child IF the parent knows that 1) CI is not a miracle for everyone and 2) thinking CI is a miracle when deciding about CI probably is a huge mistake for most - many with CI say to have low expectations, not "miracle".

I disagree because in many researches shows that cochlear implant is no where near to be a miracle. I think it'll be a miracle if God gave us hearing without the needed of a device to help us hear.

All who receive cochlear implants are still deaf. They are totally deaf when their implants are turned off. This isn't much different from what anyone experienced wearing a hearing aid, without the use of hearing aid they're totally deaf.

It's wrong to spread out to the world about a possibility of a miracle with cochlear implants when not everyone receive the same amount of hearing from their cochlear implants. It's bad advertisement.

 

[Cloggy]

Kaitin,
Thank you for finding the references...

........."miracle" and .... "in a way it IS a miracle "

Still, I did not define CI as a miracle..

Cloggy: Maybe you think CI is a miracle for your daughter. I don't think this is wrong - she is your daughter.

It's not CI that's the miracle...

But about OTHER kids and parents and NOT Cloggy - I have no problem with a parent of kid with CI thinking CI is a miracle for his child IF the parent knows that 1) CI is not a miracle for everyone and 2) thinking CI is a miracle when deciding about CI probably is a huge mistake for most - many with CI say to have low expectations, not "miracle".

Define "miracle".....

.......
Cloggy, by using such words like this to describe the CIs, some parents who come across this forum who may read that comment may take your words literally so what happens if the CIs doesnt turn out to be the "miracle" they envisioned? What then?

U want to quelch all the misinformation about CIs? I have no problem with that. What I have a problem is when Jillo or others try to quelch misinformation about Deaf culure and ASL, you or others make belittling comments about us and falsely label us as this or that. Expect Jillo and I or others to quelch misinformation about calling CIs a miracle or ASL as not being needed. U cant expect to have it your way only.

What misinformation?
I never called CI a miracle, I never said ASL is never needed. Who said that, and why are you projecting that on me... stretching again!!

 

[shel90]

Kaitin,
Thank you for finding the references... Still, I did not define CI as a miracle..
It's not CI that's the miracle...


Define "miracle".....



What misinformation?
I never called CI a miracle, I never said ASL is never needed. Who said that, and why are you projecting that on me... stretching again!!

Then what was that comment about "miracle" in your posts that Kaitlin pulled?

Do u remember saying that signing is like Japenese language which is cool to learn but not needed because the general population doesnt use it? Something in that effect?

 

[jillio]

Do you know the history of ASL? How schools did not allow students to sign even to another deaf student so sign must be secret in the past?

In the past schools hearing students of deaf/HoH kids decided to force deaf/HoH kids to use speech and lipreading only and banned ASL/sign. Deaf teachers were not allowed to give opinions. Deaf/HoH kids signed in secret:

From The Case for Recognizing American Sign Language

Although there had been an undercurrent of resistance to sign language all along (just as some elements in our society today continue to show intolerance to languages other than English), that resistance became decidedly more pronounced during the Victorian period in the latter 19th century, when forces of oppressiveness and conformism seemed to hold the day. In the 1870s influential educators and thinkers like Horace Mann, Alexander Graham Bell, and other great "oralists" and "demutizers" advocated the overthrow of the "old-fashioned" asylums and the establishment of "progressive" schools in which the deaf would be taught to speak.

Resistance to sign culminated in 1880 at the infamous International Congress of Educators of the Deaf, held in Milan, Italy. With the deaf teachers in attendance excluded from voting, it was decided to proscribe the use of sign language in the schools.

What began as a well-intentioned effort to integrate the deaf into mainstream society by teaching them to speak (what good was it to educate the deaf, the reformers asked, if they couldn’t communicate with the rest of us?), soon evolved into a "fiercely oralist" tradition where signing of any sort was not tolerated. As recently as the early 1970s, deaf children in our schools had their hands slapped if they were caught signing to each other or to their hearing friends. (The result, naturally, was that they went on signing – behind their teachers’ backs.)

This decision, as interpreted by Lane and others, had tremendous impact on the social standing and status of the deaf in the Western world. One result was that teachers of the deaf who themselves were deaf lost their jobs. (Because they couldn’t hear, they couldn’t teach speech.) As Oliver Sacks points out in his review of Lane’s book, the proportion of deaf teachers dropped from 50% in 1850, to 25% in 1900, to 12% in 1960.

Another result, many have argued, was a dramatic deterioration in the overall education and literacy of the deaf. Because it takes a tremendous commitment in time and personal attention to teach the deaf to speak, the emphasis in the classroom shifts naturally from general education and critical thinking to speech.

And -

From the New York Times: New York to Teach Deaf in Sign Language, Then English

''Deaf children tended historically to be viewed as defective beings who needed to be fixed without regard to deaf children's preferred language, which is American Sign Language,'' said Russell Rosen, a Columbia University specialist in deaf education who prepared the 1996 report that went to Steven Sanders. ''Deaf children could not understand their hearing teachers, which has produced failure after failure.''

In 1867, all 26 schools for the deaf in the United States used A.S.L. By 1907, all 139 such schools had forbidden its use in an effort to make the deaf more like hearing people. Instead, they were taught to read lips or to speak.

And because ASL was forbidden sign was secret - just among deaf and not with hearing teachers and deaf students:

From University of Rochester: Signs of New Languages

under the urging of such notables in deaf education as Alexander Graham Bell, reformers turned to lipreading as a better way for deaf people to make their way in a hearing world. Sign was driven out of the schools.

It wasn't until the early 1970s that linguists, cognitive scientists, and educators took a new interest in ASL and began to study it as a language in its own right.

Despite its suppression, ASL had not disappeared but had simply gone underground, remaining a primary means of communication for many deaf people.

So ASL is a "secret handshake" only because deaf naturally use sign and in the past hearing people including teachers banned them so they signed in secret. Thinking about history I am proud of ASL and the deaf/HoH kids who signed in secret from hearing teachers and "secret handshake" is not a negative.[/QUOTE]

to that!

Which makes the sarcastic statement from one who has no idea of the history and the reasonsiong behind the sacredness of the language to the Deaf/deaf communities even more offensive.

 

[Kaitin]

Kaitin,
Thank you for finding the references... Still, I did not define CI as a miracle..
It's not CI that's the miracle...

Define "miracle".....

YW Cloggy.

I have no problem if a parent thinks CI or result of CI is a miracle (I don't care how anyone define "miracle" because I think we probably agree. You used the word "miracle" and I just use your word, but.....

From Miriam-Webster:

Definition of miracle

1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
3Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law

I am not religious so I think definition 2 more than 1 or 3 but probably most think miracle means "Wow. Amazing!" or something. Do you agree, Cloggy? I hope so because my keyboard is dying so typing is too hard to write more about one word :P)

Anyways - if a parent thinks CI or result of CI in his/her kid is a miracle, no problem for me because the parent talks about his/her kid and not all kids or all people in general. But if anyone - parent or not, CI or not, hearing or deaf/HoH - says CI is a "miracle" or cure or complete success (I don't care about the word) for everyone then I think this is wrong and maybe gives others unrealistic expectation for CI.

 

[jillio]

Kaitin,
Thank you for finding the references... Still, I did not define CI as a miracle..
It's not CI that's the miracle...


Define "miracle".....



What misinformation?
I never called CI a miracle, I never said ASL is never needed. Who said that, and why are you projecting that on me... stretching again!!

Nice attempt at back peddling, Cloggy, but the fact of the matter is......YOU'RE BUSTED!

And thank you, Kaitlin, for taking the time to sort through his numerous posts for the exact wording. There are any number of others that convey the same message without the exact wording.

And we all might want to keep in mind, that the perception of the CI being a "miracle" is from Cloggy's viewpoint, not his daughter's, as she is not old enough at this point to vioce such an opinion. Therein lies one of the contradictions of such a protryal of the CI. It is a view that the CI is a "miralce from the hearing parent's perspective not because the benfit has been so great for the child, but because the benefit has been for the parent. The child has been rendered able to perceive sound, thus making it easier for the parent to jsutify the restriction to a spoken language only environment.

 

[jillio]

Then what was that comment about "miracle" in your posts that Kaitlin pulled?

Do u remember saying that signing is like Japenese language which is cool to learn but not needed because the general population doesnt use it? Something in that effect?

We all remember, as well, his remarks (innacurrate, to be sure) that 99% of the population of the world uses oral language, and that the deaf should conform to the majority, as well.

 

[jillio]

YW Cloggy.

I have no problem if a parent thinks CI or result of CI is a miracle (I don't care how anyone define "miracle" because I think we probably agree. You used the word "miracle" and I just use your word, but.....

From Miriam-Webster:

Definition of miracle

1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
3Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law

I am not religious so I think definition 2 more than 1 or 3 but probably most think miracle means "Wow. Amazing!" or something. Do you agree, Cloggy? I hope so because my keyboard is dying so typing is too hard to write more about one word :P)

Anyways - if a parent thinks CI or result of CI in his/her kid is a miracle, no problem for me because the parent talks about his/her kid and not all kids or all people in general. But if anyone - parent or not, CI or not, hearing or deaf/HoH - says CI is a "miracle" or cure or complete success (I don't care about the word) for everyone then I think this is wrong and maybe gives others unrealistic expectation for CI.

I personally think that my own son is a miracle....by the secular definition. But my application is to the person, and not a mechanical devise, as he is not implanted. I see the miracle as his amazing adaptation to his deafness. For the same reason, I see people such as shel, who have overcome their early restrictive oral environments to go on and achieve so much as miracles. The miracle lies in the overcoming of the obstacles that the hearing have placed in their way. The miracle lies in their not buying into the hearing attitudes of "can't" based on an inability to hear. The miracle lies in the positive self image demonstrated despite the constant implicit messages that "oral is superior". It is a miracle of personal strength, and it is a miracle that applies to all deaf individuals that have, by action and attitude, proven over the years that the deaf most certainly "can", despite the attempts of the hearing to create a situation of self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

[vallee]

From Cloggy's thread "Experiences with my daughter":August 2005: One thing to mention.. she whispers. It's so great that when we start whispering to her, she lowers her voice as well. And of course, being the sceptic engineer I put my hand in front of my mouth just to make sure she wouldn't read my lips, but no problem, she understood it all. It's such a "miracle" and we're with her on the stage witnessing it. WOW.

---
From Cloggy's thread "Cochlear Implant Mends Lives"

Jillio writes "devise is marketed to hearing parents with the attitude of being a scientific miracle that will allow their child to integrate into hearing society without difficulty"

Cloggy replies "Maybe not fore some, but in a way it IS a miracle. "

---

Cloggy: Maybe you think CI is a miracle for your daughter. I don't think this is wrong - she is your daughter.

But about OTHER kids and parents and NOT Cloggy - I have no problem with a parent of kid with CI thinking CI is a miracle for his child IF the parent knows that 1) CI is not a miracle for everyone and 2) thinking CI is a miracle when deciding about CI probably is a huge mistake for most - many with CI say to have low expectations, not "miracle".

My CIs are miracles! I'm sure many feel the same way. Good luck Rick, Cloggy, Jackie and other CI users. Enjoy the CI moments.

 

[jillio]

My CIs are miracles! I'm sure many feel the same way. Good luck Rick, Cloggy, Jackie and other CI users. Enjoy the CI moments.

And are they also miracles to children like rd's son? Or what about the implanted child who graduates from high school without the necesary skills to get into college or become optimally successful in the job market and remains underemployed according to his/her capabilites because their parents thought that "miralce" devise would make them fully integrate into hearing society. What about people like the member on this board, Travis, who had to have his implant removed because he suffered unbearable consequences? Is their CI a "miracle", as well?

You are confering on medical science a lable of omnipotence that is quite undeserved.

 

[Cheri]

My CIs are miracles! I'm sure many feel the same way. Good luck Rick, Cloggy, Jackie and other CI users. Enjoy the CI moments.

Would those who hears well with their hearing aids would be a miracle too? I don't think any device are a miracle, a miracle would be anything without the needed of help or when the impossible happens or an act of nature.

How are cochlear implants and hearing aids are the act beyond human power?

 

[shel90]

My CIs are miracles! I'm sure many feel the same way. Good luck Rick, Cloggy, Jackie and other CI users. Enjoy the CI moments.

What about the parents of my students whose CIs didnt work for them? Has their vision of a "miracle" been accomplished?

That kind of view gives potential new parents of deaf babies to take that word literally and may expect the same results that u had for their children. That is a dangerous view because it may give them the wrong idea of what CIs can or cant do.