Cochlear Implant advise

Cloggy said:
Nope..... that's the brain developing at that young age.... Sorry. (Well.. not really..)
Research clearly shows early as possible implantation has better outcome.... all other factor being equal...
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Why not shoot for in utero implantation? Would that make it best?

No need to apologize for your insulting response. I accept that it comes with the territory.
 
saywhatkid said:
Why not shoot for in utero implantation? Would that make it best?
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It is not common but some things are already treated that way and I can see someday there being something for hearing. Not necessarily implantation.
 
ciavmom said:
DD - It's people like you with your nastiness and vitriol who years ago chased us as far from the deaf culture as we could get. To answer your questions - I rarely comment on posts like this anymore because people like you attack me and because my daughters are now old enough to speak up for themselves, and they do. It's much better coming from them than from me because they will tell you that they have lived their lives successfully in the mainstream and are very happy with and grateful for the path that my husband and I chose for them so many years ago.

You must not have had any direct personal experience with AVT because it is not cruel. AVT means that the parent spends lots of time playing with the child one-on-one. My girls never knew it was work or therapy. To them it was fun. They got to play with their special toys with mom. If I missed that time with them, they asked for it. They love their therapist to this day. She's like a favorite aunt to them. They could have chosen to learn ASL when they were older, but they chose not to because they didn't need it and wouldn't have had a use for it since they live their lives fully in the hearing world. If you can't believe or accept that, then that is your issue, not theirs.

As for what happens when the implant breaks - It has happened. They have bilateral CIs. My younger daughter was just reimplanted in January. She was totally without hearing in one ear for all of two days. It was nothing more than a blip, and she hears very well out of her other ear so functioned very well for those two days. Their processors are now very water resistant, and so they have even worn them in the water. I would counter your points by saying that my girls have far fewer instances where they can't converse with everyone around them than someone who is largely dependent upon ASL does.

No option short of providing 100% normal hearing is perfect for assuring constant communication with all, but we all make the decisions that we feel are best for our children. As long as those decisions are made out of love with education and a commitment to following through with the effort needed to provide our children with a means to communicate, then no one should attack our choices. I provided a link to a website where many young adults implanted as babies and toddlers are speaking for themselves. The group on the site is a diverse one, including many who never learned sign. Listening to what these young adults have to say is to me the most important piece of research a parent just starting on this path can do today. They can't learn what it is like to be raised with CIs and without sign from someone who hasn't walked that path.
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Why is it that parents who raised their kids oral only, and who seem very hardcore about it, always act so defensive about their choice? Is it b/c they realize that perhaps we've brought up issues relating to their choice they may not have thought of? Look we KNOW that you're well intended. We're NOT attacking you. It's good that your children did well by any accounts......but there are major flaws in auditory-oral,and auditory-verbal, that its proponets don't seem to want to address. Were you aware that even TODAY, there are children (and little kids, not just teens who transferred to a deaf school ) who attend Deaf (sign-using schools) who started out in auditory-verbal programs?
But has it occured to you that perhaps many of us may also have grown up that way as well? Hardly anyone here is saying "don't pursue speech. Many many (if not most, if not ALL) dhh kids get a very hefty dose of speech therapy ad exposure to the hearing world, even if they're not in a super intense auditory oral/auditory-verbal program.....there are a lot of kids who have picked up ASL and spoken language at the same time, using it fluently in the past few years.....our question is....WHY focus exclusively on speech? Why not both? We get a plethora of HOH kids (who while they may never have gotten formal auditory verbal therapy, pretty much experianced the essense of being raised auditory verbally) posting here,that they wish they'd gotten ASL and Deaf culture, and Deaf ed as kids. Instead all they got was speech therapy. I think that says VOLUMNES. It's no longer as hard for a deaf kid to aquire spoken language, as it was in the past. (one of the arguments for oral first was "oralism is really hard so gotta focus on THAT) Kids can become BILINGAL.
Oh, and your daughter may have done well with one CI, but what if BOTH broke/malfunctioned etc? Could she survive for an extended amount of time?
 
deafdyke said:
Why is it that parents who raised their kids oral only, and who seem very hardcore about it, always act so defensive about their choice? Is it b/c they realize that perhaps we've brought up issues relating to their choice they may not have thought of? Look we KNOW that you're well intended. We're NOT attacking you. It's good that your children did well by any accounts......but there are major flaws in auditory-oral,and auditory-verbal, that its proponets don't seem to want to address. Were you aware that even TODAY, there are children (and little kids, not just teens who transferred to a deaf school ) who attend Deaf (sign-using schools) who started out in auditory-verbal programs?
But has it occured to you that perhaps many of us may also have grown up that way as well? Hardly anyone here is saying "don't pursue speech. Many many (if not most, if not ALL) dhh kids get a very hefty dose of speech therapy ad exposure to the hearing world, even if they're not in a super intense auditory oral/auditory-verbal program.....there are a lot of kids who have picked up ASL and spoken language at the same time, using it fluently in the past few years.....our question is....WHY focus exclusively on speech? Why not both? We get a plethora of HOH kids (who while they may never have gotten formal auditory verbal therapy, pretty much experianced the essense of being raised auditory verbally) posting here,that they wish they'd gotten ASL and Deaf culture, and Deaf ed as kids. Instead all they got was speech therapy. I think that says VOLUMNES. It's no longer as hard for a deaf kid to aquire spoken language, as it was in the past. (one of the arguments for oral first was "oralism is really hard so gotta focus on THAT) Kids can become BILINGAL.
Oh, and your daughter may have done well with one CI, but what if BOTH broke/malfunctioned etc? Could she survive for an extended amount of time?
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DD- the title of this thread is "Cochlear Implant Advise". This poster shared her experience, and the fact that both her children are successful and in college (or graduated already). It seems that they've done quite well, in spite of anything anyone has to say. It also seems this posters children are grown now, and if there were issues they would have been addressed when they were younger.
 
Again, I wasn't criticizing her. I did say that her kids did quite well for ANY kid. Nothing wrong with that. BUT as someone who pretty much experianced the downsides of an auditory-verbal like upbringing, I would NOT want ANY kid to experiance those downsides It's a very intense way of raising your kid. In fact it's TOO intense..It's pretty much like the way kids in Asian countries are trained to be "best of the best", and study, study, study, and go to cram schools etc. Many of them appear to score high on apitute tests, but lack creativey and other things. . There is also a HUGE rate of burn out and many downsides that aren't widely publicized.
That's all I'm saying. It's great that it works well for some kids.....but even our resident kid who was raised with AVT has said he wishes he'd gotten to learn ASL as a kid. I really am sorry for speakign out....but I also think that some people are so afraid of offending other parents/people b/c of their choices that they don't want to hear other people mention that there might be something wrong with a particualr methodology. I ALSO think that the very same hearing parents, if they became a deaf kid for a day or two, would understand why I felt I needed to speak out!
 
I was first implanted with a CI when I was in fourth grade and even at that age (around 10 yrs young), I still didn't understand the concept of a CI until I experienced it. By implanting your child, you are giving him the advantage of potentially advancing his hearing, especially at such a young age. Yet will he accept or reject it when he gets older? I'm starting to reject mine (I've already rejected my other implant without even giving it a chance to 'help' me). But honestly, who cares if he accepts or rejects it? It's his choice at that point. You are only giving him the choice to hear as much as he possibly can or to just be deaf, by implanting him at this age.

I can understand the concept of implanting at a young age yet I also understand what it is to feel as if yr choice and body was taken away from you. It's a tough one because by the time one is old enough to understand the entire concept of the CI and the existence of the Deaf culture - their hearing usually has already deteriorated. Sometimes to such an extent where it's too late to implant them.

Yet, I do think that most children would learn to grow up and accept themselves and embrace the Deaf culture if given the chance. When they get older and start to want to know what it's like to hear - I'm in full support for them. It's their decision and their body. Hopefully it's not too late.

Note: Implantees tend to feel trapped between two worlds. The hearing won't fully accept you nor will the hard-core Deafies.

I do beg that you expose him to the Deaf world/culture regardless of your choice. I didn't even know that there was a whole community of Deaf people who were proud until I started high school. Because of that, my self-esteem was very low and it took me a long time to truly accept myself, including my deafness.

That's something you need to accept in your son as well. He is deaf. You can't fix it. You can either deny that he is deaf and try to 'fix' him (without ever being able to give him all of his hearing back as well as give him a childhood filled with insecurities) or you can accept it and let him learn to accept it as well. Don't let him view himself as 'disabled' as I did when I was growing up. Don't view him that way as a parent either. He is perfect in his own ways - his deafness is not a disability. At all.

I know I'm going back and forth with this, contradicting myself even - that's because I can't seem to settle on one or the other myself. There are pros an cons. In short - It's entirely up to you.
 
deafdyke said:
...... . There is also a HUGE rate of burn out and many downsides that aren't widely publicized.
...
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That is excellent information.
Would like to read more about that....
Where did you get that information, because I cannot find it.
 
As someone who went deaf post-lingually at 8 years old, and was denied the chance to learn ASL, I highly encourage you to give your son both languages (English and ASL). It is much easier to learn ASL as a child, than as an adult.
 
Cloggy said:
That is excellent information.
Would like to read more about that....
Where did you get that information, because I cannot find it.
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Sarcasm is not your best attribute. Just saying.
 
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