News Video clip on CNN.com about CI's

[Lillys dad]

DD, "it does seem like the majority of parents who are pro oral education, simply want a "healthy normal" kid."
I guess this is one of the places that I disagree with most parents in my shoes. I dont worry abou ther being "healthy and normal". She already is.....in fact, she was born that way. Deafness has nothing to do with being healthy.In my opinion, "normal" is a subjective term that I dont really subscribe to. Neither does my wife, or Lilly for that matter. She has already established that she really doesn't care what people think about her. I really hope that we can foster, support and nourish that attitude towards the rest of the world. That degree of uniqueness is very hard to find.

"I really think that the St. Louis area isn't exactly welcoming to hearing parents. You really have to look at it from their POV.....you know the expression "once bitten twice shy?" A lot of the St. L deafies were probaly themselves products of the system. Their attitude probloy comes from frustration that the cycle is being repeated again. They see the parents pushing for oral only"
I do understand that. I am not looking to reharsh that debate. I will simply add, shame on them for stereotyping me, and my wife. If those people were actually thinking, they would have realized that, while I am the hearing father of a CI toddler, we were present at a pretty much exclusively deaf crowd. I did exactly what was expected of me, by exposing Lilly, my wife and I to deaf culture. In return, I was shit on.
As I said, I really do not want to rehash that incident. I have made my points on that topic in length, as you are aware.

Shel,
"The parents that I meet from my school are so worried and almost obsessive about their deaf child having the speech skills equivalent to hearing children."

I too find that disappointing. While most parents at CID do not take issue with the fact that we are teaching Lilly alot of sign, they are not teaching their children sign. I have lightly discussed this with other parents. But it is not my place to tell them how to approach communication parenting issues.
The staff at CID, while not advocating sign, completely understand why I , and other parents start to teach their kids sign. In fact, some of the admin fully support my decision.

Along the lines of ASL in oral schools, I am not sure if anyone here is aware of this, I certainly wasn't, but the grad students at CID are required to take ASL classes! I was very pleasantly suprised when I heard this. Our babysitter is a grad student currently student teaching, is taking ASL at CID. In fact, when she found out that we are teaching Lilly sign, she was signing to Lilly while she was babysitting!

 

[Taric25]

Not stupid

Tariq, First off, Welcome to AD. We have not yet met.

Hello, Lillys dad, thanks for welcoming me. First of all, I'd like to let you know my name is Taric, not Tariq. Although the Arabic spelling is Tariq, my name is Taric.

First off, I am HEARING, not a "heafie".

Second of all, I did not call you or anyone of AllDeaf a Heafie. To start, you are Hearing, so it's physically impossible for you to even be a Heafie. A Heafie is a Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing/Oral Deaf/Latened Deafened/Speech-Disabled/DeafBlind person who pretends to be a Hearing person. My father, who is Latened Hard-of-Hearing, is a Heafie. Let me give you an example of one such instance.

Taric: Hey, Dad, have you heard of CapTel, the Captioned Telephone?
Taric's Dad: No, what is it?
Taric: It's a normal phone with one big differance. You can talk to the person, and when the person talks back, you can hear and read the captions at the same time.
Taric's Dad: That's what I need! How much is it?
Taric: The state gives it to you free. You just fill out the application with your personal information, a copy of your ID, the first page of your phone bill and a doctor's signature.
Taric's Dad: A doctor's signature?– For what?
Taric: You need a doctor to verfiy you're Hard-of-Hearing.
Taric's Dad: No, I don't want it.
Taric: Why not?
Taric's Dad: Because if I get it, it means I'm Disabled.

Furthermore, please read exactly what I said. I did not call anyone a Heafie.

It's not about being Deaf. It's having a visual meathod of communication. Just because you have a CI doesn't mean you have to be a Heafie. You can speak well and understand spoken dialogue, as well as communicate in a visual medium. Even Hearing children who use a visual way to communicate show an enlarged vocabulary compared to their non-visual peers.

When I wrote the word "you", it means "someone". In other words, I could have just as well wrote the sentance, "Just because someone has a CI doesn't mean that person has to be a Heafie," which is exactly what I meant.

My point was, just because someone has a CI, it doesn't not automatically mean that person must be a Heafie. That person can very well still identify as Deaf (or Oral Deaf). That person can still communicate visually.

I also do not think it is appropriate to call people here, or thier opinions "stupid".

Third of all, I did not call anyone here stupid. If you're going to quote me, claiming that I called people here "stupid", and the post which your quoting starts with a quote of what I think is stupid, then please quote everything I say, including if I quoted another person. I know the AD message board doesn't do that automatically, so it takes some extra work on your part. Here's exactly what I said.

Narrator: when bens mother found out he was deaf she began to learn sign langauge, now her studys have been put on hold.

STUPID!

You need to give the baby a form a visual communication. If you want the baby to grow up in the Hearing world, fine, but teach the baby something. Don't depend on the cochlear implants for everything. What if his auditory nerve goes bad. Are you gonna' give him an auditory brainstem implant and depend on that? STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

I called the narrator's remark about the halting of sign language studies (studys) stupid. Did I call any specific person "stupid"? No, I was ranting about the narrator's remark. Yes, I'm sure the narrator is not a computer but a real, breathing person who probably wakes up in the morning, takes a shower, eats breakfast, kisses the wife goodbye, drives to work and does narration, but I doubt that you were upset because I called the narrator's comment "stupid", as your being upset had nothing to do whatsoever with the narrator's comment, but rather, someone here at AD. Who did I call, "stupid," here at AD?: no one.

As far as a hearing parent exposing a CI kid to deaf culture, it is not as easy as you may think.

Fourth of all, I never said it was easy. What did I say? Why don't we have a look with a :gasp:... quote.

The baby should learn some form of visual communication, such as ASL, SEE, or Cued Speech. If they want the baby to grow up in the Hearing world, fine, teach him Cued Speech, and let him socalize with Deaf people to learn ASL and have a second language. He can teach them Cued Speech, and he can learn ASL.

There are many words in the quote, "should" being the key word. For example,

You should try your best to get "A+"s in school.

The word "should" doesn't mean getting "A+"s in school is easy, just like how I said a baby should grow up and socalize with Deaf people.

This is no place to call other people's opinions STUPID -- you can find better and softer wording for that. In other words, there are posters on this forum that have "agreed to disagree" without ending up in silly and non-constructive arguments.

Again, I did not call any person's opinion (opionion) "STUPID". Please read what I wrote.

Narrator: when bens mother found out he was deaf she began to learn sign langauge, now her studys have been put on hold.

STUPID!

You need to give the baby a form a visual communication. If you want the baby to grow up in the Hearing world, fine, but teach the baby something. Don't depend on the cochlear implants for everything. What if his auditory nerve goes bad. Are you gonna' give him an auditory brainstem implant and depend on that? STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

Again, I called the narrator's remark about the halting of sign language studies (studys) stupid. Again, did I call any specific person "stupid"? Again no, I was ranting about the narrator's remark. Again yes, I'm sure the narrator is not a computer but a real, breathing person who probably wakes up in the morning, takes a shower, eats breakfast, kisses the wife goodbye, drives to work and does narration, but I doubt that either you or Lillys dad were upset because I called the narrator's comment "stupid", as your and Lillys dad's being upset had nothing to do whatsoever with the narrator's comment, but rather, someone here at AD. Again, who did I call, "stupid," here at AD?: no one.

he said something stupid

Oh, you're allowed to say "stupid", and I'm not? I can say another word too. It starts with "h" and rhymes with "baby-sit".

 

[Lillys dad]

STUPID!

You need to give the baby a form a visual communication. If you want the baby to grow up in the Hearing world, fine, but teach the baby something. Don't depend on the cochlear implants for everything. What if his auditory nerve goes bad. Are you gonna' give him an auditory brainstem implant and depend on that? STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! If the baby takes off the processor, he's still a deaf child.

The baby should learn some form of visual communication, such as ASL, SEE, or Cued Speech. If they want the baby to grow up in the Hearing world, fine, teach him Cued Speech, and let him socalize with Deaf people to learn ASL and have a second language. He can teach them Cued Speech, and he can learn ASL. Give him an identity. Don't let him become some sort of synthetic Hearing person!

Your comments, while directed towards the commentator, are in response to the parent. How do you consider the commentator to be stupid when he has no control over how the child is raised? After all, that is what you re commenting on, correct? You make the comment about the child still being deaf when the processor is removed. As I said, the reporter has no control over that.
I gotta go, I'll finish later.

 

[deafdyke]

The parents that I meet from my school are so worried and almost obsessive about their deaf child having the speech skills equivalent to hearing children.

I know.............and yet, only a small percentage will ever have really good speech skills. Most of them will only have basic speech skills and or a basic understanding of English. I have a friend who's so high and mighty about the fact that she's oral and was mainstreamed, but yet her English language abilty is just SO BAD!
Lilysdad, at least you have us here to talk to. You really didn't get shit on by Deaf culture. More like Deaf extremists. Not all cultrally Deaf people are like that. That was just ONE example! I wish you hadn't experianced that......I really do. I think attitudes like that are one reason why Sign and Deaf culture aren't that popular. But wait til Liliy's older. I really think that by the time Lily's ten, that attitudes will have signifcently changed. It's frustrating, yes....it does take time.......but believe me
Oh, and that's cool that there are some oral people who are OK with Sign....just wish it was more of a mainstream attitude, rather then seeing ASL and Sign as spesal needs.

 

[Taric25]

Misrepresentitive News

Your comments, while directed towards the commentator, are in response to the parent. How do you consider the commentator to be stupid when he has no control over how the child is raised? After all, that is what you re commenting on, correct?

That is precisely why I directed my comments towards the narrator. My response was not towards the parent. Allow me to explain why.

First of all, I doubt the narrator's comments were an accurate. This story, just like nearly all CI news articles, in my experiance, focuses on the wonderful ability for the CI to magicly draw a Deaf person out of archaic, disabled world of silence and sign into a new world of hearing and speaking. Like many news stories, its an unrealistic, innaccurate representation of what a CI can and can't do. IMHO, the narrator misrepresents the parents' intentions, and that's why I call it "stupid".

Second of all, in case the mother really is dropping sign language altogether, well, I don't agree with her, but I'm not about to personally call her "stupid". Besides, even if I did, is she a memeber here on AD? No, she is not. Again, when I wrote "stupid", I was not saying it to anyone here on AD.

 

[Lillys dad]

Fair enough. Again welcome.

 

[Taric25]

Thanks for the welcome

Fair enough.

I thank you for you understanding.

Also, I wonder, could you give us a little more information on your own philisophy on parenting a Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing child, as well as how you believe it impacts Lily personaly? What method(s) do you believe in?: lipreading, speech therapy, Tadoma (Tadoma is tactile Oralism, mostly used by DeafBlind, but it's also used by some Deaf to learn how to pronounce words. The user places one hand on the throat of the Hearing person and the other near the Hearing person's lips, to feel the vibrations and movement, of speech.), ASL (American Sign Language), SEE (Signing Exact English)/MCE (Manually Coded English), "PSE" ("Pidgin Signed English")/Contact Sign, Total Communication, Cued Speech or otherwise. Also, this question goes out to everyone, so feel free to answer.

 

[Lillys dad]

I will answer later, right now, I gotta go. ITS QUITIN TIME. I will respond this evening when I get home.

 

[Lillys dad]

This could get lengthy. In fact, I will have to do this one over a few posts due to time.
My opinion on raising a deaf child is actually pretty simple. I will explain it as I know it from my perspective.
First off, I chose the name "Lillys dad" for a reason, that is the single most important title that I have in my life. I am a son, husband, police officer, friend and so on. Lillys dad is the most important title because I am a father. Once you are a parent, your main mission in life is to raise your child/children to be self sufficent, responsible, honest, hard working contributing member of society.
With a deaf child(or anyother disability), your goal does not change. What does change is the level of involvement and dedication to acheive those goals. Being the parent of a deaf child means that you must be more involved in education than a parent of a hearing child. You must be the enforcer, cheerleader, advocate, and shoulder to cry on. As I said, this is the same as with a hearing kid, but I must be more involved. I have to fight for her when ever necessary, for what ever is necessary.
I must also be able to balance the afforementioned with the fact that she is a 2 year old girl. This means that while it would be most beneficial if she was constantly surrounded in speech therapy, oral this and speech that. I disagree. It is equally important for her to just have some free time to be a kid. Afterall, the only way to accomplish the main goal is to raise a happy kid.
It is also important to raise Lilly so she is comfortable with who she is. If she is not, she will never fully develop self esteem, not to mention self confidence. I for one am not a believer of raising kids with self esteem for no reason. Self esteem is like respect, it is earned, not given. The only way she will be able to earn self esteem and confidence is if she accepts the fact that she is different from the other kids. In my opinion, being different is good for creating character and morals.
Right now, Lilly is too young to understand that she is deaf. She does not yet realize that everyone else in her life can hear naturllay, while she cannot. When she is old enough to ask about it, I will explain it to her like this. Everyone has their issues in life. Everyone has had things happen to them that are not fai in one way or another. Some are deaf, soeme have been molested, soem are blind, some end up in wheelchairs, some had their parents die at a young age. EVERYONE has had bad things happen to them in one way or another. That is not what defines you as a person. How you deal with it does. You have two options when deciding how to deal with deafness. You can use it as a crutch, a reason why your life did not turn out the way you wanted, an excuse. Or, you use it to make you stronger. A kind of "If I can deal with this, I can deal with anything type of mentality. Use it as a source of strenght to draw from. A crutch, or stregth. Everyone has this decision in life to make for themselves. Everyone.
Is this a politically correct response to explaing a disability to your child? Probably not. But it will convey to her that just because she cannot hear like everyone else, she can still acheive the same things that everyone else does.

I gott ago, time to make dinner. I will continue this later.

 

[LuciaDisturbed]

 

[sr171soars]

Yea, I ditto those sentiments...

Nice start LD! I too subscribe to a shortened version of what you said but I call it the "sink or swim" school of life.

 

[deafdyke]

This means that while it would be most beneficial if she was constantly surrounded in speech therapy, oral this and speech that. I disagree.

Most benifical according to whom?

It is equally important for her to just have some free time to be a kid. Afterall, the only way to accomplish the main goal is to raise a happy kid.
It is also important to raise Lilly so she is comfortable with who she is. If she is not, she will never fully develop self esteem, not to mention self confidence. I for one am not a believer of raising kids with self esteem for no reason. Self esteem is like respect, it is earned, not given. The only way she will be able to earn self esteem and confidence is if she accepts the fact that she is different from the other kids. In my opinion, being different is good for creating character and morals.

Agreed! Kids shouldn't be enriched constantly......most kids just need time to be KIDS!
Oh, and I think that one thing you miss is self esteem in dhh kids is hard to develop b/c we face so much prejudice....like people think we're MR b/c of the quality of our voices, or we get made fun of constantly (and not just normal childhood making fun of either)

 

[Lillys dad]

Good title!
For communication types, I am not set on ony one type overall. Afterall, no two people are the same what works for Lilly, may not work her her best friend Jordan (also deaf,CI kid). I cannot comment on the listed types of communication, I can only comment on what works for me and mine. We are oral based. So, I will discuss this first. We are a firm belielver in the method you talked about, placing her hand on my throat and so on. Before you said the name of this type of learning, I had neer heard it. To teach Lilly how to make a specific sound,I do as you described. I place Lillys hand on my throat, mouth, cheek or whatever works to (what we call) "feel the sound". We also use a small hand held mirror so she can see the sound as she makes it. We keep the mirror handy so we can use it during play. Lilly has incredible hearing with her CI on she hears at 20 db across all freq ranges. Because of this, she picks up on new sounds very fast. She can easily hear the difference between sounds, so it is easy to repeat what she hears.
As far as sign, we initially thought it was best to not teach Lilly sign. I quickly realized this plan was not good. As soon as she began to show a good communication base in speech, I began to teach her sign. We started doing this so Lilly could communicate her wants and needs when her CI was off. Recently, trhis paid off. Her CI quit working. She communicated all day with sign. She does have limited sign capabilities, but she can tell us what she wants, who she wants, and where she wants to go.
Initially, I was looking into teaching her ASL. I came to the conclusion that this would become a problem down the road. Afterall, the sign I had been teaching her was english based. I had been teaching her SEE or contact english and not even realized it. Since her communication is speech, english based, I decided SEE based would be best. So that is what we are doing. I see no problem with TC.
I am a beliver that it is my job to teach Lilly how to communicate whether her CI is working and on, or broken and not on. I want her to be informed and educated enough to make communication decisions for herself when she getsr. We got her the CI at 1 1/2 years old. Now we are getting her the bilateral. We did this at a young age so she could take FULL advantage of CI. If we waited until she was old enough to make her own decision, it may be too late for her to get the same benifit.
If she gets older and decides that she wants to take off her CI and keep it off, so be it. SHe will have a good enough exposure to sign and deaf culture, to make the transition somewhat smoothly. If she keeps the CI on, so be it. She has been given the CI at a time where she can take full advantage of it.
To be continued... gotta get Lilly to sleep.

 

[Lillys dad]

Chapter III

My wife and I feel that it is important for Lilly to be comfortable in deaf circles as well as hearing. Lilly is surrounded by kids her own age that have CI and hearing aids. We have not really exposed her to kids that are sign only. Simply because we do not know any.
As I was saying earlier. I feel strongly that it is important for Lilly to make the decision of how she wants to communicate when she is older. Until that happens, it is my job to introduce her, and teach her each form of communication.
When Lilly gets older, I will be very suprised if she does not have deaf friends. Because of this, I am pretty sure there will be signing going on. I not only want her to know what is being said, but I want to know what is being said. If I cannot communicate through som etype of sign, there will be a portion of my daughters life that I cannot participate in. Not that I am the nosy parent that has to be involved in everything. I just want to have the option along with Lilly.
As far as my phiosophy of raising a deaf child, its simple. In short, I want my daughter to be a happy, healthy well adjusted and rounded person. The fact that she is deaf, has very little to do with that. It is just a contributing factor of who Lilly is. It is not what makes her who she is.
Lillys deafness is not the defining factor of her life. It is simply helps define who she is.
It is my responsibility to give Lilly the best chances of success in her life, regardless of where her life takes her. That is why I do what I do as a parent. Put simply, I am just doing my job as a parent.

Does all of this explain enough for you?

 

[LuciaDisturbed]

I agree with you, LillysDad, and you are doing a great job!

 

[shel90]

Thanks for sharing everything with us LillysDad!!! You care more about Lilly's self-esteem and her capabality to become a self-assured person. I didnt have that growing up so my self esteem was damaged badly. Going to Gallaudet really changed my life and I chose to be in a signing envrionment 90% of the time cuz I feel very comfortable with it. I will go back to spoken English environment for my family's sake once in a while but I can never feel comfortable cuz I am very independent and I HATE asking people to repeat what everyone is saying for me. Some others dont mind but for me, I feel like I am a burden to them so I try my best to catch what everyone is saying or sit there alone. I just do not feel comfortable having my husband interpret for me all the time or tapping on anyone's shoulder and have them step out of the conversation just to repeat what others are or have been saying. Too many times, I get an impatience look on people's faces so I just stopped. AS long as I have my needs met with my deaf friends, I dont mind being left out anymore.

Growing up, kids made fun of my voice and called me retarded or just avoided me. High school was better but too often all of my friends got together as a group and everyone would be laughing and gossiping having fun while I would be just working hard to catch everything that is being said. That was no fun for me. Just too much work for me. ASL is natural for me so of course I would grativate to an all ASL or signing environment rather than to an all spoken environment.

 

[Lillys dad]

Thoise are alot of things that I do not want Lilly to have to deal with. I cannot shield her from everything. Even if I could, I wouldnt. Only because she must be able to defend herself at somepoint. In order to do that, unfortunately she must be exposed to the assholes that walk in our society.
Lilly has a pretty good head start. SHe has very, very good hearing and speech. SHe almost displays the same speech as someone about six months younger than she is. If she continues to progress at this rate, when she is older, the only way anyone will really be able to tell tha tshe is "different" is by seeing the CI.
Either way, Lilyl is well on her way to being a very strong individual, that can take care of herself. As I type this, I am listeneing to her and my wife argue about Lilly trying to do things "MY WAY!!!" as she says. She is fiercely independant and will not let you do something for her if she can do it herself.
Another thing she does that demonstrates that she is not afraid to tell you that she didnt hear something is, when you are holding her, or your face is near her, and you say something that she does not hear clearly, or understand, she will grab you by your chin, turn your face towards her and say "wha".I gotta go, I think Lilly is abou tto beat up my wife! Time to referee.

 

[shel90]

Another thing she does that demonstrates that she is not afraid to tell you that she didnt hear something is, when you are holding her, or your face is near her, and you say something that she does not hear clearly, or understand, she will grab you by your chin, turn your face towards her and say "wha".I gotta go, I think Lilly is abou tto beat up my wife! Time to referee.

That is good..just hope that people wont give her a bad attitude about having to repeat themselves or what others say for her. Years of dealing with that took a toll on me and at this point, I feel it is not worth it anymore. Just got tired of the rolled-eyes expression, the *sighs*, and worse of all, the "I will tell u later"s years after years. That is the biggest reason I prefer to be in an all-signing environment so I wont have to put up with that crap anymore.

I just hope Lilly wont have that experience too and have a positive attitude with an all-spoken environment but just wanted to give u a heads up.

 

[deafskeptic]

Me too.

There is no phrase I hate worse than "Never mind." :roll:

 

[Lillys dad]

Lilly hears amazingly well, considering that she only has one ear implanted. As I have said, she hears at 20 dbs. That is amazing considering she is profoundly deaf. I realize that those 20 bds are in a sound booth environment. Even outside the booth, she still hears better than I do. I have to ask people to repeat themselves alot more than Lilly does. Tonight we went to a local italian eatery for dinner. I was pretty crowded with alot of background noise. I had to ask my wife to reapeat herself several times. I tested Lilly by asking her things and talking to her. She understood everything I said until I started talking quietly. WHen I noticed she was having a hard time hearing, I returned to my normal voice. SHe did very well. I can only imagine how she will be able to hear with the bilat in that environment.