Uhh, after posting my previous message, i realised some sentences were missing, so here is my full message:
I thought I'd step in and tell you guys a little bit about myself.
I was born profoundly Deaf, and diagnosed at 5months old, and shortly after that started wearing hearing aids. Then we left our old country and moved to NZ, my parents - from advice from Advisers of Deaf Children - decided to choose the bilingual approach etc, which worked well. They did a lot of reading with me, one-on-one speech etc. I was above average in my classes. And then when I was 12 - I heard about CI and thought to myself "I am deaf, but I don’t have any deaf friends" (as I live in a small town) I talk with my hearing friends etc, play sports with them - I only knew one or two deaf people, and so I decided to go ahead with having a CI as I believed that I would never meet Deaf people.
But curiously - as we often went to the big city, for programming of my CI etc I met a few more Deaf, and then in 2000 I went to Sydney, Australia for 3 months on a student exchange program, I met all these Deaf people and I was blown away by how fantastic it was.
I had finally met people who I could relate with, and I started learning sign language and loved it. I felt comfortable with it.
I came home to NZ, and started to seek out more Deaf people here, by going to Deaf clubs on Friday nights etc, and yeah I just loved my time with all the deaf people etc.
When I look back at getting the CI, if I had already KNOWN all these people, I wouldn’t have gotten the CI, but since I knew no Deaf people at that time, I got it so that life would be easier with hearing people (and it did get easier - I could understand my hearing friends more clearly - hear people calling me etc).
Now, I'm in both hearing and deaf world, with hearing people I usually wear my CI, but with Deaf people I don't (what's the point - you can't hear sign language can you?).
And it was as I got older that I started to realise the extent of the debate on CI - the CI team was telling my mother to stop using sign language with me and to be totally oral with me. I didn’t agree with that. She's refused to do that, and we carry on with bilingual conversations etc.
If you're wondering about my speech - yes it got better after using a CI. But even when I don't wear the device, according to my friends, I still speak clearly and they understand me fine.
As I’ve said before, I’m not 100% against CI, but I’m also not 100% for it – I don’t like parents implanting their babies for the wrong reasons etc, and like, telling them that they are hearing, not Deaf. Some students have come to me (when I visited the Deaf school) and said they are getting a CI, and I asked “Oh really? How come?”. They replied “My dad says I have to.” This was coming from a 12 year old with no verbal skills. Totally 100% sign-language realise. It is cases like these that I cringe about the CI Team and the doctors giving out biased information (REMEMBER – this is coming from a perspective in NZ – it’s different in America, I believe)
But, it all comes down to one thing – the individual’s choice (or their parents’ in some cases).