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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beckell" data-source="post: 2515945" data-attributes="member: 83496">Greeting, thank you for sharing and your concern with us about your friend’s struggle.  It’s a tough decision especially with young children. I am myself deaf but I do wear one digital hearing aid on my right ear. My right ear is about 50% of hearing and my left is profoundly deaf. I absolutely love my hearing aid and never have been complain about it. It’s almost sound similar with her daughter’s hearing loss.  My deafness was from my mother’s rubella when she was pregnant with me. So that’s what caused my hearing loss. I do not know much about the BAHA. From my experiences with many of my deaf friends and even some of them have cochlear implants; they are pretty strongly against having cochlear implant/BAHA. One is because the children are too young to have BAHA/cochlear implants. Let them make their decisions when they get older. For me I could have a cochlear implant but I turned it down. I thank to my parent for letting me have the decision in later life instead of when I was younger. It’s make a lot easier that way for different reason. I encourage her to teach her children ASL (even I speak very well but I learned it young). So that way they can have both forms of communications. They may not catch every single words when having a conversation with someone, class (when they go to school) etc. It’s important to let children decide (when they are much older if they want cochlear implant or BAHA) and which form of communication they want. Total ASL, Total Communication (mixture of ASL and oralism) or oralism.Have she consider a digital hearing aid? I’m wondering if that will help? It’s a pretty basic and safe. No surgery required. Also I encourage her to check out her state, look under the Dept. of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (or look under Educational Services Program for the Deaf and Hard of hearing. They operates under the direction of the <a href="http://dpi.wi.gov/">State (whichever you live in) Department of Public Instruction</a> and supports students from across the state who are deaf, hard of hearing, or deafblind in a variety of ways.They have a wealth of resources that may help her guide and make right decisions. Not all states have it so you need to check it out. Also I strongly her to check out the Dept. of Public Instruction where they have what is called deaf mentor program. It’s a great program where families with deaf/hh children meet and work with deaf mentor on communication such as learning ASL; learn deaf culture, and resources. Families can ask questions and get advises from a deaf mentor (based on his/her experiences). Families also go to a State Conference once a year to meet other families with similar struggles and get the support from others. All of this goes through this Educational Services for the Deaf and HH. This is also where you can find ASL classes. Here is a link but you need to check out your state of where she lives. This link gives you an idea of what we have here. <a href="http://www.wesp-dhh.wi.gov/">http://www.wesp-dhh.wi.gov/</a>. Hope this is helpful.Speaking about school, maybe she can consider mainstream near their home with an ASL interpreter? Have she thought about that? That way her kids don’t have to live far away. It’s important for her children to socialize with deaf/hh children. I insist that’s very important based from my personal experience. Its helps to prevent from the feeling of isolation and low self-esteem. They will have a better social life.Being deaf is not a bad thing. God has a purpose for us. I thank to the Lord for who I am because He gave me abundant blessings in my life.They are in my prayer. I look forward to hear from you. Take care.</blockquote>

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