How to Decide on Cochlear Implant Surgery for Children

Status
Not open for further replies.
deafdyke said:
Exactly!!!!!! Thanks sr171soars! I feel like I'm being portrayed as a Scrooge or something.
I will say that I do think the insurance companies should allow bilateral implantation if the first implant does not access at least 65% speech, and if the speech perception is poor even aided.
The fact of the matter is that right now a second CI simply enhances sound directionality
and ease of hearing in crowd situtions. That's nice and all.......but many implantees can get that with a hearing aid. I just think that the implantation criteria for a second implant should be MUCH stricter.
Click to expand...

That's because it is a situation you'll never be in.
 
faire_jour said:
.......................That is absolutly your right to decide, and it is a vaild decision, so long as you understand the ramifications.
Click to expand...
We have had this discussion before. Regardless of the parents choice they are still making a choice for their child. If you choose to wait and let the child decide you have still made a choice for your child.
 
rockdrummer said:
We have had this discussion before. Regardless of the parents choice they are still making a choice for their child. If you choose to wait and let the child decide you have still made a choice for your child.
Click to expand...

Yep. There is no such thing as "wait and see" in this case.
 
faire_jour said:
Yep. There is no such thing as "wait and see" in this case.
Click to expand...

Depends a bit on if the child is profoundly deaf and has no usable hearing to learn spoken language if that is the family's goal.
 
It just seems like the attitude out there nowadays is that deaf children cant function if they dont have CIs.
 
shel90 said:
It just seems like the attitude out there nowadays is that deaf children cant function if they dont have CIs.
Click to expand...

Personally, I don't believe that at all, and I doubt anyone here does.

I do believe that it is exceedingly difficult for a child to learn spoken language if they are profoundly deaf. A CI gives them the ability to hear speech, which makes the process easier.
 
rockdrummer said:
We have had this discussion before. Regardless of the parents choice they are still making a choice for their child. If you choose to wait and let the child decide you have still made a choice for your child.
Click to expand...

Yep, it gets old...very old.

Hobson's choice...
 
Most pre-lingually deafened adults, who receive CI's as adults, do not end up understanding spoken language through listening. Children implanted generally do.
Click to expand...
What about those with some hearing percpetion with hearing aids? Not all prelingally deaf adults are stone deafie. Many have residual hearing you know. Many wear hearing aids....Heck, many of us here were implanted DESPITE being prelingal....and a lot of us prelingal deafies have done AWESOME!
:roll:
I do believe that it is exceedingly difficult for a child to learn spoken language if they are profoundly deaf. A CI gives them the ability to hear speech, which makes the process easier.
Click to expand...
Yes, but in this case your child ALREADY has one VERY good speech comprehension ear.
It's not like your child has very poor speech comprehension
Yes, it's not a decision that I'll ever have to make..........but it's not like Miss Kat has NO speech comprehnesion in her aided ear. Seriously.....a second CI is NOT vital when the second ear is still usable.
 
faire_jour said:
Personally, I don't believe that at all, and I doubt anyone here does.

I do believe that it is exceedingly difficult for a child to learn spoken language if they are profoundly deaf. A CI gives them the ability to hear speech, which makes the process easier.
Click to expand...

Well, it seems like..implant them young or they will never learn spoken English! Just an underlying message implying that if they dont get implanted, they would never be whole.
 
shel90 said:
Well, it seems like..implant them young or they will never learn spoken English! Just an underlying message implying that if they dont get implanted, they would never be whole.
Click to expand...

Hi Shel! It's true, there is an urgency to that drumbeat, but I think that "implant early!" is the message ONLY if you are considering spoken language to be important either to you or for your child. It seems to come up only when people say that they will wait until their child is old enough to make the choice. Rockdrummer put it more eloquently, but said something to the effect of if you don't implant early, you are making the choice for your child.

But valuing spoken language is very different from considering someone without it to not be whole. For example, I value beautiful music and the ability to create it, but I don't feel like only part a person because I don't have that ability (people cringe when I sing). My daughter is totally deaf and she can sing on pitch - sometimes - and loves to play piano. We've provided her with keyboard and lessons, we surround her with music and lots of encouragement, and if she wants to watch TV vs play piano I'll coax her to the piano (though television sometimes wins), but if she drops her lessons at 8 and never plays again, chooses soccer or painting, I would never consider her a piano failure or not whole. And I don't think that having learned to play piano young has ruined her for the non-piano-playing community. It just gives her the foundation for playing enjoyably early on.

I'm not saying you are a bad parent if you don't provide piano lessons (or spoken language)! I'm not providing ballet lessons, which -- as another area that very young children can pick up more easily than older children -- is making a choice for her. I do value the grace, skill, and discipline involved in ballet that she would carry throughout her life, but we took her to watch dancers, we took her to watch concerts, and we observed her natural leanings, and piano it was. Our values and our child's interests together shape her options.
 
GrendelQ said:
Hi Shel! It's true, there is an urgency to that drumbeat, but I think that "implant early!" is the message ONLY if you are considering spoken language to be important either to you or for your child. It seems to come up only when people say that they will wait until their child is old enough to make the choice. Rockdrummer put it more eloquently, but said something to the effect of if you don't implant early, you are making the choice for your child.

But valuing spoken language is very different from considering someone without it to not be whole. For example, I value beautiful music and the ability to create it, but I don't feel like only part a person because I don't have that ability (people cringe when I sing). My daughter is totally deaf and she can sing on pitch - sometimes - and loves to play piano. We've provided her with keyboard and lessons, we surround her with music and lots of encouragement, and if she wants to watch TV vs play piano I'll coax her to the piano (though television sometimes wins), but if she drops her lessons at 8 and never plays again, chooses soccer or painting, I would never consider her a piano failure or not whole. And I don't think that having learned to play piano young has ruined her for the non-piano-playing community. It just gives her the foundation for playing enjoyably early on.

I'm not saying you are a bad parent if you don't provide piano lessons (or spoken language)! I'm not providing ballet lessons, which -- as another area that very young children can pick up more easily than older children -- is making a choice for her. I do value the grace, skill, and discipline involved in ballet that she would carry throughout her life, but we took her to watch dancers, we took her to watch concerts, and we observed her natural leanings, and piano it was. Our values and our child's interests together shape her options.
Click to expand...

I agree with you. I wish more people were like that out there. My friend who is deaf has two deaf boys and she was bullied by the oral only program educators/audiologists and her family doctor to implant both of her boys. She went through so many nights crying herself to sleep because they wouldnt let up about all kinds of crap about the window closing for spoken language and blah blah. She grew up orally without CIs and feels that her boys dont need them as they are both bilingual. She finally pulled her boys out of that program and put them in a TC program so she wont be no longer bullied. Other parents who are involved in the Deaf community have shared similiar experiences by those professionals. One of them got labeled as a neglectful mom for not implanting her daughter.

There even has been a few posts here by parents sharing their experiences with getting pushed into implanting their children. These parents havent posted in a while though...
 
There are windows of opportunity for language acquisition and also regarding a CI if ossification is suspected or setting in that is also a window that would rapidly close. I am not sure what exactly you mean by being "bullied". I am not pro or anti and have always stated that each case is different and should be evaluated and recommendations made on a case by case basis.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
rockdrummer said:
... each case is different and should be evaluated and recommendations made on a case by case basis.
Click to expand...

You are right. Each case SHOULD be evaluated on it's own merits, but it sometimes doesn't happen that way. There are some audis, ENTs, teachers and other 'people of knowledge' (not ALL... some) who feel all deaf children should be implanted, regardless of their circumstances. They then harp on parents, many of whom are dealing with a very small child/infant who's just been diagnosed and all this information is being thrown at them. The good doctor says "don't you want what's best for your child?" and of course they say yes. Problem is they are not educated in all the options. They're not given time to recover from the shock of the diagnosis before people start shoving product fliers in their faces. It's quite possible they won't learn about the other options out there until they meet another deaf child who did it differently, sometimes years later.

I have a friend with a baby boy who has a severe loss. His doctor told her that, if he had his way, he'd implant all his patients before they're 6 months old. She told him that she wasn't interested in CIs and he rolled his eyes and said "you will be, sooner or later". She went doctor shopping the next day.
 
WeeBeastie said:
You are right. Each case SHOULD be evaluated on it's own merits, but it sometimes doesn't happen that way. There are some audis, ENTs, teachers and other 'people of knowledge' (not ALL... some) who feel all deaf children should be implanted, regardless of their circumstances. They then harp on parents, many of whom are dealing with a very small child/infant who's just been diagnosed and all this information is being thrown at them. The good doctor says "don't you want what's best for your child?" and of course they say yes. Problem is they are not educated in all the options. They're not given time to recover from the shock of the diagnosis before people start shoving product fliers in their faces. It's quite possible they won't learn about the other options out there until they meet another deaf child who did it differently, sometimes years later.

I have a friend with a baby boy who has a severe loss. His doctor told her that, if he had his way, he'd implant all his patients before they're 6 months old. She told him that she wasn't interested in CIs and he rolled his eyes and said "you will be, sooner or later". She went doctor shopping the next day.
Click to expand...

This is one of the reasons why I have a huge distrust in the ENTS and audiologists.
 
WeeBeastie said:
You are right. Each case SHOULD be evaluated on it's own merits, but it sometimes doesn't happen that way. There are some audis, ENTs, teachers and other 'people of knowledge' (not ALL... some) who feel all deaf children should be implanted, regardless of their circumstances. They then harp on parents, many of whom are dealing with a very small child/infant who's just been diagnosed and all this information is being thrown at them. The good doctor says "don't you want what's best for your child?" and of course they say yes. Problem is they are not educated in all the options. They're not given time to recover from the shock of the diagnosis before people start shoving product fliers in their faces. It's quite possible they won't learn about the other options out there until they meet another deaf child who did it differently, sometimes years later.

I have a friend with a baby boy who has a severe loss. His doctor told her that, if he had his way, he'd implant all his patients before they're 6 months old. She told him that she wasn't interested in CIs and he rolled his eyes and said "you will be, sooner or later". She went doctor shopping the next day.
Click to expand...

Yes, each case should be evaluated on its own merits and it would truly be wonderful if that was the rule. As for your examples regarding some audis, ENTs, teachers and other 'people of knowledge' that door swings both ways as there are SOME Deaf individuals, educators and professionals who feel all deaf children should not be implanted, regardless of their circumstances.

They tell hearing parents that they do not "accept" their deaf child, they are forcing their child to have an implant or that they do not "love" them. Moments after our daughter's hearing test that confirmed she was indeed profoundly deaf, the audiologist pulled my wife aside and told her not to listen to anyone who tells her that our daughter could learn to speak, that we should move and relocate near some school for the Deaf. Luckily we did not listen to that idiot and went "audiologist shopping" and found a truly wonderful audiologist who is still her audiologist today.
 
rick48 said:
Yes, each case should be evaluated on its own merits and it would truly be wonderful if that was the rule. As for your examples regarding some audis, ENTs, teachers and other 'people of knowledge' that door swings both ways as there are SOME Deaf individuals, educators and professionals who feel all deaf children should not be implanted, regardless of their circumstances.

They tell hearing parents that they do not "accept" their deaf child, they are forcing their child to have an implant or that they do not "love" them. Moments after our daughter's hearing test that confirmed she was indeed profoundly deaf, the audiologist pulled my wife aside and told her not to listen to anyone who tells her that our daughter could learn to speak, that we should move and relocate near some school for the Deaf. Luckily we did not listen to that idiot and went "audiologist shopping" and found a truly wonderful audiologist who is still her audiologist today.
Click to expand...
there are usually two sides to the coin.
 
as there are SOME Deaf individuals, educators and professionals who feel all deaf children should not be implanted, regardless of their circumstances
Click to expand...
Well, on the other hand that number is dying. More and more Deaf folks are realizing that CI is not incompatible with Deaf culture.
Were you aware that when hearing aids were first introduced, Deafies were against them?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top