Feelings on Cochlear implants

shel90 said:
I agree and in addition to that, speech itself is not a language. There is this huge misconception out there that speech is a language. I think that's when deaf education fails a lot of deaf/hoh children.
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**nodding agreement**. Speech is nothing more than a communication method.
 
Shel, the troll comment was not directed towards you. It was directed to a troll (and the troll knows who I am referring to). Besides Shel, if I thought you were a troll, you wuold know my opinion of you. In fact, you are one of the people I enjoy discussing issues with. We seem to agree on a wide variety of topics, from a different perspective.
Shel, I agree with what you are saying, abou tkids gettign too far behind. In fact, so do oral schools. As I said, very early on, (before age three) if the school sees a child that is falling behuind or just simply not "getting it" due to one reason or another, they refer the kids to a different educational environment (usually one of the TC approach).
I agree with Jillios statement. We are all lookng at "teach" a little too literally. Does anyone at her school teach her sign? No. Do I teach her sign outside of school? Yes, constantly. Am I proficient at it? No. But is she being exposed to it in a naturally occuring manner which makes it an environmental education. Yes.
I agree speech is not a language, if you once again take the word in a literal manner. If you look at "speech" from that perspective, then you must accept that "sign" is not a language. Both or mediums in which language is communicated. I assume when we use the word speech, we are simply referring to oral communication. I also assume that sign is used when referrinig to ASL. Am I correct when I assume this? Or is this conversation going to get all politically correct from this point forward requiring us to refer to things in its proper manner? If it is,then Im finsihed with it. WHen things start to get PC, free exchange of ideas get buried.
 
Lillys dad said:
Shel, the troll comment was not directed towards you. It was directed to a troll (and the troll knows who I am referring to). Besides Shel, if I thought you were a troll, you wuold know my opinion of you. In fact, you are one of the people I enjoy discussing issues with. We seem to agree on a wide variety of topics, from a different perspective.
Shel, I agree with what you are saying, abou tkids gettign too far behind. In fact, so do oral schools. As I said, very early on, (before age three) if the school sees a child that is falling behuind or just simply not "getting it" due to one reason or another, they refer the kids to a different educational environment (usually one of the TC approach).
I agree with Jillios statement. We are all lookng at "teach" a little too literally. Does anyone at her school teach her sign? No. Do I teach her sign outside of school? Yes, constantly. Am I proficient at it? No. But is she being exposed to it in a naturally occuring manner which makes it an environmental education. Yes.
I agree speech is not a language, if you once again take the word in a literal manner. If you look at "speech" from that perspective, then you must accept that "sign" is not a language. Both or mediums in which language is communicated. I assume when we use the word speech, we are simply referring to oral communication. I also assume that sign is used when referrinig to ASL. Am I correct when I assume this? Or is this conversation going to get all politically correct from this point forward requiring us to refer to things in its proper manner? If it is,then Im finsihed with it. WHen things start to get PC, free exchange of ideas get buried.
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I recently read a research report that was a case study of a deaf of deaf child whose parents were raised orally, but were late learners of ASL. The purpose of the study was to discover if a child could surpass his models in fluency. Basically, they compared the type of syntactical, grammatical, and verb of motion errors that the parents made to both a group of adult late learners and native deaf signers. They then compared the same type of error rate of the child with deaf of deaf children and deaf of hearing children. Although this child's models ( his late learning parents) were inconsistent in their language production, his fluency had surpassed both. He was able to insinuate proper syntactical, grammatical, and verb of motion usage, and when he made errors, they were more likely to be developmentally based than actual language useage based. He produced fewer errors of any type than did his late learner parents.

This supports a couple of things that I have been saying through these many discussions. It doesn't matter that a late learning parent produces perfect ASL models for the kids. What matters is that they are proficient enough to facilitate communication in the home. A deaf child who is very visually based will process in a visual mode, and therefore, intuitively understand the language structure.

And, exposure to native signers only increases that abiltiy to discern language sstructure in a method that is most conducive to the deaf child.
 
As I said, very early on, (before age three) if the school sees a child that is falling behuind or just simply not "getting it" due to one reason or another, they refer the kids to a different educational environment (usually one of the TC approach).
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And that's good...........that's something that has changed. But, is it appliable accross the board? Like do ALL oral schools do that? Do all oral programs (there are SOME public school oral programs) do that? Do therpists in the general early intervention system do that?
 
Lillys dad said:
Shel, the troll comment was not directed towards you. It was directed to a troll (and the troll knows who I am referring to). Besides Shel, if I thought you were a troll, you wuold know my opinion of you. In fact, you are one of the people I enjoy discussing issues with. We seem to agree on a wide variety of topics, from a different perspective.
Shel, I agree with what you are saying, abou tkids gettign too far behind. In fact, so do oral schools. As I said, very early on, (before age three) if the school sees a child that is falling behuind or just simply not "getting it" due to one reason or another, they refer the kids to a different educational environment (usually one of the TC approach).
I agree with Jillios statement. We are all lookng at "teach" a little too literally. Does anyone at her school teach her sign? No. Do I teach her sign outside of school? Yes, constantly. Am I proficient at it? No. But is she being exposed to it in a naturally occuring manner which makes it an environmental education. Yes.
I agree speech is not a language, if you once again take the word in a literal manner. If you look at "speech" from that perspective, then you must accept that "sign" is not a language. Both or mediums in which language is communicated. I assume when we use the word speech, we are simply referring to oral communication. I also assume that sign is used when referrinig to ASL. Am I correct when I assume this? Or is this conversation going to get all politically correct from this point forward requiring us to refer to things in its proper manner? If it is,then Im finsihed with it. WHen things start to get PC, free exchange of ideas get buried.
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Speech and signs made by the hands are not language itself. Oral (English German, Spanish, and etc) and ASL, BSL, FSL, and etc are languages.

I wasnt referring to u about speech but when u brought up speech, it reminded me how many parents got speech confused with language. They seem to have the idea that if their child has speech skills, then they have a language. Not neccessarily that simple, heh? Like my son, he can sign a few words but he doesnt have a fully developed language yet. That's how many parents see with their deaf kids that can say some words using speech.
 
deafdyke said:
And that's good...........that's something that has changed. But, is it appliable accross the board? Like do ALL oral schools do that? Do all oral programs (there are SOME public school oral programs) do that? Do therpists in the general early intervention system do that?
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Unfortunately not , otherwise we wouldnt have 7 to 8 year olds coming to our schools barely able to express themselves in either sign or oral languages. That is when things become extremely difficult since those kids are finally exposed to ASL fully and they have to learn the vocabulary, concepts, and many more that is involved with language development when they are at the age when they should be learning how to read and write.
 
Thanks, I was wondering about that............and there ARE kids 7 to 8 year old, who have such bad speech/ language skills? WOW.........Just WOW!!!!
I have to say that I think that it should be the law that dhh kids should get intervention through the Deaf schools..........I really think a big part of the problem is that a lot of kids are simply served in general EI programs. Those types of programs are good for kids with cognitive and physical issues, but they tend to really suck for blind and deaf kids.
 
That is crazy!!! 7 or 8 year old kids that have been screwed up by family/school refusal to sign! I completely agree with you on that one.
DD, it is almost impossilbe to have an across the board standard. I work in a middle school and hear alot about standards and so forth. But when you get into private ed programs, it pretty much all bets off. That is one of the reasons that there arent many kids with "disabilities" in religous schools. Thej religous schools dont HAVE to, by law make the same accomidations as public schools. An across the board standard is next to unheard of.
 
Lillys dad said:
That is crazy!!! 7 or 8 year old kids that have been screwed up by family/school refusal to sign! I completely agree with you on that one.
DD, it is almost impossilbe to have an across the board standard. I work in a middle school and hear alot about standards and so forth. But when you get into private ed programs, it pretty much all bets off. That is one of the reasons that there arent many kids with "disabilities" in religous schools. Thej religous schools dont HAVE to, by law make the same accomidations as public schools. An across the board standard is next to unheard of.
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I think most of the kids I see are from the public schools. From my understanding, many of the public schools have such different educational philosophies on how to teach deaf children. I can be wrong but that was what I get from the parents when they express their frustrations with specialists giving them different opinions. It just seems that nothing is consistent and that screws up the kid. Actually, it wasnt until my brother was 6 years old when my mom or whoever finally recognized that he wasnt progressing at all linguistically through the oral approach. I will have to ask my mom what prompted the decision to send him to the deaf school at the age of 6 not at a younger age if he hadnt picked up on spoken language. :dunno:

Yes, many of the parents, inlcuding my own mom, never learned sign language. I had to interpret for my brother growing up even though I didnt know sign language myself. I was the only one who could understand his poor speech skills and the only one he could understand via lipreading. My family is just soooo weird. I know. When I first got involved with the deaf community, many people were so shocked that I was my brother's sister. He is very well-known in the deaf community and is extremely fluent in ASL both expressively and receptively. I am more fluent in it receptively but expressively, my English takes over when I sign rather than thinking in pictures all the time. I am getting better though.
 
if i were ever to have a deaf baby, i would get him/her chochlear implants, dint know if i spelt that right. but anyway, the only reason is because i am hearing and i would whant the best for my child. but dont get me rong, being deaf is not a bad thing, i just believe since deaf people arent able to do things such as join the army, why not give my son or daughter the best possible chance to make any disition possible for them.
 
z.a.m said:
if i were ever to have a deaf baby, i would get him/her chochlear implants, dint know if i spelt that right. but anyway, the only reason is because i am hearing and i would whant the best for my child. but dont get me rong, being deaf is not a bad thing, i just believe since deaf people arent able to do things such as join the army, why not give my son or daughter the best possible chance to make any disition possible for them.
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Hmmm I never thought about the army thing so r u saying that by implanting your child, he or she will be able to join the armed forces. The question is, can deaf people with CIs join the armed forces? Does anyone know?
 
You would be surprised; there are many Deaf parents that would be happy if their child was DEAF, not hearing. I recall a PBS TV program about 10 years ago, where they showed 2 brothers, both deaf. One was going to implant their deaf child, and the other was deadset against it. As for service, I am not sure either. I would say no, but it is just a guess. There would certainly be positions that a deaf soldier could accept, but I am not sure the military would provide a deaf soldier with any type of assistance; nor can I imagine they would tolerate being told to accept anyone cuz they are the military and do not like being told what to do. BTW glad to see you have posted more!
z.a.m said:
if i were ever to have a deaf baby, i would get him/her chochlear implants, dint know if i spelt that right. but anyway, the only reason is because i am hearing and i would whant the best for my child. but dont get me rong, being deaf is not a bad thing, i just believe since deaf people arent able to do things such as join the army, why not give my son or daughter the best possible chance to make any disition possible for them.
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shel90 said:
Hmmm I never thought about the army thing so r u saying that by implanting your child, he or she will be able to join the armed forces. The question is, can deaf people with CIs join the armed forces? Does anyone know?
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The men still have to register when they turn 18, but the answer is no, they can't join the military. They can work as a civilian for the military, but that's all. Went through this with a student I work with recently.
 
jillio said:
The men still have to register when they turn 18, but the answer is no, they can't join the military. They can work as a civilian for the military, but that's all. Went through this with a student I work with recently.
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Jillio is right. All men, eligible for service or not, need to register, but CI users can't serve - the CI just has too many potential points of failure.
 
jillio said:
And then, you have the child who has been implanted, but resents their parents for that.
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Jillio, I can understand how a child would be resentful after being convinced by some in the deaf culture that the parents did it for selfish reasons. It's a fear I have for my child after seeing how some continually insist parents make this choice for selfish reasons even though they have been told over and over that the decision was not for selfish reasons.
 
saywhatkid said:
You would be surprised; there are many Deaf parents that would be happy if their child was DEAF, not hearing.
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Hmmm... I wonder why deaf parents would want their kids to be deaf. Is it so they would be more like them? Isn't that what some deafies are complaining about with hearing parents wanting CI's for their children? So they would be more like them? Interesting......
 
rockdrummer said:
Hmmm... I wonder why deaf parents would want their kids to be deaf. Is it so they would be more like them? Isn't that what some deafies are complaining about with hearing parents wanting CI's for their children? So they would be more like them? Interesting......
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Some hearing people have told my deaf friends who have deaf kids that they r being selfish for not implanting their children. There reason was that the deaf parents r not providing their child with the option or opportunity to hear.

*sighs* Maybe we all need to stop fighting with each other and just leave everyone alone about their decision on whether to implant the child or not and provide both sign and oral languages to all these children, implanted or not so they have all the opportunities given to them (speech development, auditory input development, visual language, identity and blah blah)

Another way of solving this problem, but impossible, is having 90% of deaf/hoh being born to deaf people and 10% being born to hearing parents. Just saring what was going thru my head so pls do not take it literally. Thanks
 
z.a.m said:
if i were ever to have a deaf baby, i would get him/her chochlear implants, dint know if i spelt that right. but anyway, the only reason is because i am hearing and i would whant the best for my child. but dont get me rong, being deaf is not a bad thing, i just believe since deaf people arent able to do things such as join the army, why not give my son or daughter the best possible chance to make any disition possible for them.
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umm.. I'm not sure... but it is possible that the army will reject a person with a CI.. I'll have to check with my boyfriend who's in the army.. Or we can ask some of the former military that are part of AD.. I am not sure who...

And while a lot of audiologists and specialists will try to convince parents that CI's or HA's are best for the child... Myself and a few others advocate the use of Total Communication.. meaning that even if the kids have CI's or HA's.. they should be enrolled in a Total communication program.. so that they have all the best advantages of using Sign language, Speech (Talking), and Lipreading. I was raised total communication.. and have no problem interacting with both deaf and hearing. So yeah, I think it's a good idea.
 
Ismi-"the CI just has too many potential points of failure". Sorry I have to disagree with this. It is not the CI that would be the [problem. It is the fact that without the CI, the solider cannot hear. I served in the Army for three year active duty. Based on my experiences, I am certain the army would not take a deaf person whether or not they had a CI. The CI failing has nothing to do with it.
As we all know, with or with out the CI the person is still deaf. If the CI gets lost, or batteries die, the solider essentially becomes worthless due to communication breakdown. He could not recieve orders over a radio, commo would be very difficult between him and teammates. If the CI were inoperable, for whatever reason, he would instantly become a liability to his teammates and himself. Picture yourself in downtown Baghdad in middle of a fire fight, with bullets flying everywhere, airstrikes, mortars and all, then all of teh sudden, you cannot communicate with anyone. It is easy enough to get killed in combat. By putting someone in harms way that could easily lose the capability to communicate vital info person to person, or over a radio, you are doing that person, and others a huge disservice and putting many lives at risk.
 
Lillys dad said:
Ismi-"the CI just has too many potential points of failure". Sorry I have to disagree with this. It is not the CI that would be the [problem. It is the fact that without the CI, the solider cannot hear. I served in the Army for three year active duty. Based on my experiences, I am certain the army would not take a deaf person whether or not they had a CI. The CI failing has nothing to do with it.
As we all know, with or with out the CI the person is still deaf. If the CI gets lost, or batteries die, the solider essentially becomes worthless due to communication breakdown. He could not recieve orders over a radio, commo would be very difficult between him and teammates. If the CI were inoperable, for whatever reason, he would instantly become a liability to his teammates and himself. Picture yourself in downtown Baghdad in middle of a fire fight, with bullets flying everywhere, airstrikes, mortars and all, then all of teh sudden, you cannot communicate with anyone. It is easy enough to get killed in combat. By putting someone in harms way that could easily lose the capability to communicate vital info person to person, or over a radio, you are doing that person, and others a huge disservice and putting many lives at risk.
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Yea, that's what I thought but since I wasnt sure, I prefered to ask first. Thanks
 
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