rick, I am NOT saying that speech therapy and being involved with your kid is helicopter parenting. Hypersensative much? There IS a happy medium between normal parental involvement and helicopter parenting.
I've got it!!!!! I think I know how to explain so you'll stop thinking I'm attacking your parenting style. It's pretty much like a regular education approach. You'd have regular schooling. Picture say an average suburban school where most kids go off to State College. You'd have some extreme status overacheivers who would be happy with nothing but a Status Name Brand College. Then you'd have a really hypercompetitive school...think a public school, but where it's a Status Thing to go off to Name Brand Univeristy. You get a LOT of helicopter style parenting. (gotta keep up with the Joneses and live viacasiously through my children. They NEED to be something High Acheiveing)
Consistant speech therapy (and even some AVT sessions) would be normal parental involvement. Nothing wrong with that. You are attacking me as if I implied that ALL speech therapy =helicopter parenting. However, there are parents of dhh kids who basicly ....well in A Journey to the Deaf World, one of the deaf people profiled (who was raised orally) said that her mother was more a therapist then a mother. For example, your "speech therapy" was more language enrichement. However someone who is on a very intense speech therapy route, would be constantly (read CONSTANTLY) making their dhh kid play the games from the John Tracy course, and lots of visits to an AVT and speech therapist, and basicly devoting their kid's entire existance to spoken language. There are quite a few oral only parents who think that if some speech therapy is good, devoting a kid's entire existance to speech therapy is even BETTER!
I'm actually on your side. You basicly did the experianced with dhh kids speech therapist and made sure your daughter was exposed to a language rich enviroment.....and she picked it up. You didn't feel the need to go whole hog and overdo it.
And you don't understand my usage of the phrase "speshal needs" I have consistantly said I am NOT making fun of people with disabilities. I would never do that. What I mean by that phrase is that there is an attitude among professionals and experts and even parents of kids with various and sundry disabilties that the ONLY good functioning for a kid with a disabilty, is "healthy normal" functioning. For dhh kids that would be spoken language without the "crutch" (whatever that means) of ASL and speechreading. For blind low vision kids, that would be using residual vision to the max with no things like Braille or other blind/low vision accomondations, for wheelchair or CP kids that would mean functioning like a person without a physical disabilty (ie walking walking and more walking) I am not making fun of special needs kids. Rather I am making fun of professional's attitudes that stuff like wheelchairs, sign language, Braille, and any numbember of other disabilty accomondations is somehow "below" kids who can walk or talk or whatever.