Listening And Hearing, Not The Same For Children With CI

One of my dogs is an expert at getting pizza off the kitchen counter. I would never throttle her! She's a sweetie. :D
 
Yes they are. It takes a smart person to appreciate poodles. It's a secret intelligence test. I can tell who is not passing... :lol:
 
Willsmom, as long as you don't push your son into listening and forcing him to go into mainstream school without ASL. Your son need visual more than anything than trying to please his mother with listening. That is what I had gone through and I really hate that when my mother does not appreciate me as a deaf person. She refused to learn sign language back then and not understood how important I needed ASL so badly so that I can understand what the hearing teachers and hearing students are saying in the hearing classrooms. I did not have a very good grade if I can not make out what the teacher was trying to teach us on the subject like Math or Science or Home Ed, etc. So make sure your son have access to the accommodations that he need to understand in the regular or hearing classrooms when he will be ready to enter going to school, even mainstream school. Just don't push him what you want him to do for you. He can make his own decision when he was ready to enter school and choose one or two toolboxes that he will be comfortable to communicate. That is all when there is concern about deaf child or deaf children's concern where there is deafness.

I am saying as blunt to the fact and give you my or other's experience of why parents should not force them to listen when you know perfectly well that hearing loss is not the same as "normal" hearing. Just accept your son as a deaf person. You can not change him from deaf to normal hearing.
 
I believe she already knows that she cannot change her child who is deaf into "normal hearing."
 
tend to be defensive because other people have been and really mean about it too - not on this site and hopefully it stays that way. I know they learn to listen and it takes more work than hearing children but it is worth it. I work with my son hours every day to help him. It is wonderful to see him run after me saying mama mama after we thought he might never develop any speech because of his profound deafness. I know hearing babies develop quicker speech abilities of course they do but CI children can learn to have verbal conversations with hearing people and asl with other deaf people.
Click to expand...
It's OK........ Hope you'll stay!!!!!! Overall we are very CI friendly....and that rocks that you're also pursuing ASL!!! That will be an awesome tool for him! It is not like it was in the old days at ALL! JW, I know your location says that you're in Upper NY....have you contacted any of the Deaf Schools in your area? I know he's young, but Deaf Schools really do offer AWESOME resources for dhh babies and toddlers....and The NY State School for the Deaf is very oral friendly (they sign too)
 
sallylou said:
One of my dogs is an expert at getting pizza off the kitchen counter. I would never throttle her! She's a sweetie. :D
Click to expand...

Every time we had meat loaf, we would have to keep an eye on my big sister's cat so we could keep her face out of our meat loaf.

My cat used to go crazy when my mother roasted chicken. She got so annoyed with my cat that she kicked her out of the dining room.
 
And I really appreciate all the things my parents, especially my mother did for me! :)
 
"I sign with him, but I do primarily do verbal communication and expect him to do the same. "

Willsmom - please don't take this the wrong way, I'm just wondering...why is it important to you that he does "primarily" verbal communication?
 
My child Is amazing

I expect him to talk because he can and does. If he was not capable of doing it I would not make him do it. As a parent it is my job to push him
To do everything he can do. When he first got his CIs activated he immediately started to try and talk verbally with us even though he'd only had them a couple days at 11 months old. I sign with him but he chooses to talk with me verbally even when given the choice of what he wants to do. He loves vocalizing and yes I will encourage him to do it properly, since he wants to do it I will teach him to talk to the beat of his ability to learn. It is a parents job to make sure their child has every option available, just because my child was born deaf does not mean that I should not teach him to verbally communicate. Right now he is young and for his brain it is the easiest time for language acquisition so I am teaching him now.
 
Ok...I'm profoundly deaf, got my hearing aids at age four and was mainstreamed. My mother was an English teacher so she took on the job of teaching me both to speak and to learn English. To be honest, she was so happy every time I pronounced a word right that despite hating the speech therapy lessons, I did it because I liked giving her such joy.

However! Because I am deaf, despite that I literally read a book a day and had an English teacher for a mother, that beause I wasn't hearing all the words in a sentence, it showed in my writing - terrible structure, verb tenses were past, present and future so I do understand the importance of language acquisition at a young age but I do beliee that it's important for a child to have acquisition of a language that s/he can acquire fully before learning another language. Once they are fluent in one language, it becomes far easier to take on a second language. And not only that, it fosters self-confidence to know that you are fluent 100% in a language as opposed to being able to speak and read English but only hear bits and pieces of it that leaves you feeling isolated and left out not to mention "defective".

All that to say, that I am not going to offer my opinion about CIs, etc. But speaking from experience, I do encourage for your child's psychological well being that you give ASL the same importance as speech.
 
willsmom said:
I expect him to talk because he can and does. If he was not capable of doing it I would not make him do it. As a parent it is my job to push him
To do everything he can do. When he first got his CIs activated he immediately started to try and talk verbally with us even though he'd only had them a couple days at 11 months old. I sign with him but he chooses to talk with me verbally even when given the choice of what he wants to do. He loves vocalizing and yes I will encourage him to do it properly, since he wants to do it I will teach him to talk to the beat of his ability to learn. It is a parents job to make sure their child has every option available, just because my child was born deaf does not mean that I should not teach him to verbally communicate. Right now he is young and for his brain it is the easiest time for language acquisition so I am teaching him now.
Click to expand...

Again, this is not criticism, but simply pointing out a couple of things that you might not have considered, since this is all relatively new to you.

You say you sign with him, but he responds verbally. Just because he responds verbally doesn't mean that he is not using a great deal of the visual for understanding. Please keep signing. It will only increase his ability to understand communication and his world.

Also, do you sign when you are communicating with others in his presence? Kids Will's age are great obwervers. They watch what goes on around them, and then decide what is right by seeing how others interact. If the rest of the family is using speech with each other, and only sign with him, then he will believe that the only right thing to do is respond in speech. Most hearing parents do not think of this until it is pointed out to them that this is the way any child develops the communication and social skills they need at this age. It is especially true for a deaf child, because they are naturally more visual. And it is also very normal for them to interpret the message differently than what the parent intended. For instance, I have worked with several deaf children whose parents signed only to them, and used oral communication with the rest of the family. Those kids, early on, developed a sense of something being different about them. A child naturally interprets "different" to mean "wrong" because they are so dichotomous in their thinking at that age. They internalize that perception as a core part of their identity, and it truly has a huge impact on the way they feel about themselves as they grow older.

Again, not criticising or saying you are doing anything wrong. Just trying to point out some things that will make your and your son's journey easier and more enjoyable.
 
DeafCaroline said:
Ok...I'm profoundly deaf, got my hearing aids at age four and was mainstreamed. My mother was an English teacher so she took on the job of teaching me both to speak and to learn English. To be honest, she was so happy every time I pronounced a word right that despite hating the speech therapy lessons, I did it because I liked giving her such joy.

However! Because I am deaf, despite that I literally read a book a day and had an English teacher for a mother, that beause I wasn't hearing all the words in a sentence, it showed in my writing - terrible structure, verb tenses were past, present and future so I do understand the importance of language acquisition at a young age but I do beliee that it's important for a child to have acquisition of a language that s/he can acquire fully before learning another language. Once they are fluent in one language, it becomes far easier to take on a second language. And not only that, it fosters self-confidence to know that you are fluent 100% in a language as opposed to being able to speak and read English but only hear bits and pieces of it that leaves you feeling isolated and left out not to mention "defective".

All that to say, that I am not going to offer my opinion about CIs, etc. But speaking from experience, I do encourage for your child's psychological well being that you give ASL the same importance as speech.
Click to expand...

You are so right, DeafCaroline. A child will naturally strive to do that which makes a parent, or any important person in their life, happy. That doesn't mean it is the easiest route for the child, just that pleasing that person is very much important to them; especially at this age. If mom smiles when he speaks, he has gotten a favorable reaction. He will continue to do that which gets that reaction.
 
"If mom smiles when he speaks, he has gotten a favorable reaction. He will continue to do that which gets that reaction."

I hope she also smiles when he signs. I am certain willsmom truly wants the best for her child like any good mother would...like my mother. She gave up her career for me. She became President of Voice, a committee of parents of deaf kids. She really devoted all she had to help me - in her way.

But she had worked so hard on focusing speech development with me that she didn't realize that it was causing me a lot of harm in that there was so much pressure to make me as "Hearing" as possible. I did do very well in speech and in fact, people are often shocked, even parents of mainstreamed deaf kids at how well I speak. They would have no idea that I can't hear a damn thing if I didn't tell them. So, in that sense, my mother was hugely successful. But I was the most miserable kid in the world because no matter how well I could speak, I still couldn't hear any better and that made me feel like a total failure that desptie 10 years of truly intensive speech therapy - I am talking at least 2 hours a day, I still could not function that well in the hearing world. Yes, I can talk to a hearing person and talk non stop but when they speak, I am not catching all of it and I hate asking them to repeat themselves because they get so impatient and mad sometimes which further re-inforced my sense of self as being a failure. The fact that I could speak so well worked more against me than for me for it deceives people into thinking I can hear than I really can which made it far more difficult for me to understand them.

Anyhoo, willsmom - again, please don't take this as criticism - we are sharing our personal experiences with you to help you understand your deaf child better and know what to do and what not to do as he gets older.
 
Doing my best and then some

I get everyone is not purposely trying to seem critical but it does come
Across that way - no offense. I am everything I can but there are limits. My husband works all day and I dont have any "deaf community" anywhere remotely near where we live. I had to teach myself ASL I know how to sign words but the grammatical structure is so different from English it makes it very hard. We don't have deaf schools closest one is 10 hours away, so what is best for him is to try and get him to learn both languages and learn as we go.
 
willsmom said:
I get everyone is not purposely trying to seem critical but it does come
Across that way - no offense. I am everything I can but there are limits. My husband works all day and I dont have any "deaf community" anywhere remotely near where we live. I had to teach myself ASL I know how to sign words but the grammatical structure is so different from English it makes it very hard. We don't have deaf schools closest one is 10 hours away, so what is best for him is to try and get him to learn both languages and learn as we go.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Sometimes people simply forget that not everybody live in or nearby a large enough town or city that have all those conveniences. But what you are doing is doing the best of your abilities given your limited resources.

Keep up the good work!
 
Back
Top