"Fixing" the child or not?

GrendelQ said:
I don't think anyone who has looked into getting a CI thinks there's not surgery involved, I haven't seen anyone arguing that it's some kind of topical ointment or anything.

Is your argument with the idea that a parent would intervene in how a child would access language or is it just with allowing medical treatment for a child. Do you object to all other invasive medical processes such as vaccinations, prescription medicine, filling cavities, circumcision, removing tonsils, removing wisdom teeth, inserting ear tubes or is there some line of demarcation?
Click to expand...

No, that is not my argument at all. But it is a fact that the CI is an invasive procedure, and that must be considered when considering the deaf perpsective regarding such. It is a variable that is being ignored by the hearing in their consideration of what that implies to the deaf community.

The procedures you have listed are comparing apples to oranges, as there is no cultural connotation attached to any of them. Except perhaps circumcision, but that is a whole other topic.
 
GrendelQ said:
A, if I left Li-Li 'as is,' without intervention she would have no access to language. She spent a year in an institution without access to language, I feel very strongly that leaving her be -- without a means to communicate -- is not allowing her to be who she is, it's locking her in a cage.

It's not just my right, but it's my responsibility to provide access best as I possibly can.
Click to expand...

In some cases, trying to make some deaf people hearing is like a prison... Just because some people know how to hear and speech with the tools they have doesn't mean they have a wider choice. Some oral-only deaf have a hard time carrying on a conversation.. and some get frustrated that they become a hermit as they get older out of fear of miscommunication and lack of confidence. Parents really need to help their child how to deal with their deafness WITHOUT using hearing tools such as CI or HA.
 
A said:
In some cases, trying to make some deaf people hearing is like a prison... Just because some people know how to hear and speech with the tools they have doesn't mean they have a wider choice. Some oral-only deaf have a hard time carrying on a conversation.. and some get frustrated that they become a hermit as they get older out of fear of miscommunication and lack of confidence. Parents really need to help their child how to deal with their deafness WITHOUT using hearing tools such as CI or HA.
Click to expand...

Why? Why shouldn't parents be encouraged to help their child develop both visual and auditory language? Why shouldn't they use all the tools that could help them in life?
 
up to them... but they are doing alot of damage if they don't help their deaf child how to cope in silent.
 
That is , when their processor is off, or they can't understand people in certain situation, can't hear the phone, etc. They are doing alot of damage if they don't help their child use another method that will work.
 
jillio said:
Of course it is. And so you provided ASL as access to language. So the CI, in addition, was to provide access to spoken language, was it not?
Click to expand...

My child could not have picked up ASL in the orphanage in China. She would not pick it up in my house either -- no one I knew was familiar with ASL, myself included. We'd spent months learning Mandarin basics (barely) in our house to meet her needs -- we didn't know she was deaf or we'd have been running ASL videos.

Years later and I'm still woefully behind -- a terrible language model for ASL. Every night she corrects my signing: 'no mama, that sign means camera, this is a photograph.' I'm still at a Signing Time level while she's telling 30 minute-long stories to us in sign while our mouths hang open in amazement. That knowledge isn't my doing -- it's thanks to TLC (her bi-bi school), their ASL infant daycare, their PIP program, their preK. Without them, my daughter would definitely not have adequate access to ASL today and our choice would be limited to the CI for language access.

Putting her into an ASL immersive environment and getting a CI were both interventions, disruptions to her natural state (or rather, state of no action) that provided access to language. I don't think inaction, leaving her be as they had done in the orphanage, was at all an option for us.
 
A said:
That is , when their processor is off, or they can't understand people in certain situation, can't hear the phone, etc. They are doing alot of damage if they don't help their child use another method that will work.
Click to expand...

Ok. But do you think that there is an option of that happening? Kids are never able to have their processors on 100% of the time. The kids are exposed to silence as the time. Like Grendel said, they are nothing but a shift of a hat away from silence all the time.
 
If you read one of my post, Some parents will do everything they can to make sure that won't happen. processor have to be on all the time. Then they get all depressed when their child have no choice but take off their processor instead of saying "No worry, We have ASL" . How is their child is going to cope if a parent have an attitude like that?
 
A said:
If you read one of my post, Some parents will do everything they can to make sure that won't happen. processor have to be on all the time. Then they get all depressed when their child have no choice but take off their processor. How is their child is going to cope if a parent have an attitude like that?
Click to expand...


Who do you know that acts like that?

I know of parents who waterproof the processor for swimming, but that is about the language and communication that takes place during swimming, and they don't want them left out. I have seen it generally in older kids, not little ones, but sometimes they do it for swimming lessons, so the child can understand the instructor.

I don't think it is done out of sadness or fear of silence.
 
A said:
If you read one of my post, Some parents will do everything they can to make sure that won't happen. processor have to be on all the time. Then they get all depressed when their child have no choice but take off their processor instead of saying "No worry, We have ASL" . How is their child is going to cope if a parent have an attitude like that?
Click to expand...

I don't even see parents with that attitude. Good grief, I am pretty old and I sure never saw my parents depressed if anything went wrong .

People are a lot more resilient than you give them credit for. And most people at least know some sign.

They could write if worst came to worst.

We don't really need all these Apocalyptic scenarios. They aren't going to convince anybody.
 
Everyone know writing is a pain. And yes, parent do get sad when their child can't access to spoken language when they need it. And Not once my mother signed to me. Or write. She just didn't bother. So not everyone sign.
 
A said:
Everyone know writing is a pain. And yes, parent do get sad when their child can't access to spoken language when they need it. And Not once my mother signed to me. Or write. She just didn't bother. So not everyone sign.
Click to expand...

But are you talking about what happened when you were growing up, or parents today? have parents told you that they get sad and depressed when their child can't wear their processor, or are you just assuming?
 
souggy said:
Wirelessly posted

The need to write and ASL goes hand-in-hand.
Click to expand...

I agree, but really, do you want to write all the time? Sure, I just take my laptop everywhere and say, This is my language when I don't have my CI/HA... type for me.
 
GrendelQ said:
It seems that some on this board think that a CI is a fix for deafness and that surgery "fixes" a child -- a concept I strongly disagree with for the reasons I've put forward much earlier in this conversation. This makes me think that you (those who think Li-Li is "fixed") consider her a broken object to begin with and now a 'working model'.

Aren't you very much disrespecting my deaf child by framing the discussion as if he or she is a broken object?

People tend to value things that are "fixed" over things that are broken -- I wonder if you ascribe the same value to a child with or without a CI, which would be a natural step given the common association.

That's an attitude I might expect to find among some small number of uneducated people unfamiliar with deafness, something we'd have to combat (a misbegotten idea that my deaf child is broken, incomplete, not capable). I'm surprised to see people here -- enlightened to the equality of all people, deaf or otherwise -- would want to promote the idea that some children are fixed, and support any associated value that might have.

I still just find it very hard to get behind a view in which people can be "fixed" in any way -- with surgery, therapy, handtools, environments, whatever the tool you use. If you say my child is fixed, you are saying that a deaf child without a CI is broken. I find that offensive.
Click to expand...

If CI Surgeries isn't considered a "fix" then what you call it then? "Repair"? that's still "fixing".

Any connotation you can come up with doesn't change the fact they are "fixing" the child's deafness because by and large in the hearing community that deafness is perceived as "abnormal", thereby we are found to be in a unacceptable condition simply because we are not what they are taking for granted on a daily basis.

Now I can understand if they are born hearing and they have taking their hearing for granted in their daily lives and suddenly for some reason they lost their hearing. They will want their hearing back and if CI is one those options that can enable them to once again hear sounds, they may go for it, despite of what possible consequences that it may bring post-op.

For some people, losing their hearing is perceive an "end of the world" scenario and they rather die rather than live a life of deafness. :roll:

Yiz
 
Back
Top