faire joure, you have to stop thinking we are attacking you! We are simply bringing up issues and concerns that you are not thinking of. Yes, implanted kids are doing a lot better then in the past. There's very little "kids who are eight years old and only have a handful of words" But they are STILL hoh, and deal with the same hoh issues that audilogically hoh students have (we have been the most mainstreamed and most oral) Even today 30% of hoh kids have language and other "classic" dhh issues. I see very little " my way is the only right way." Just b/c we are bringing up issues and concerns about a particualr methodology you think we're attacking you. You also think that the traditional/classic hoh route has no downsides. You seem to think that b/c you were told that oral only isn't sucessful and then found out that kids COULD speak and hear, that we're lying about the downsides. Shelli, Bajagirl and I all grew up that way. Granted you're not doing it "oral first and then ASL"...Which is good. ...but you also seem to be taking the problems you had with your bi bi program and expolarating it to all bi bi programs. You wanna know something? One of my friends sent her (audilogically) hoh daughter to Kansas School for the Deaf for preschool. (didn't have an oral program) Although Remy was (and is quite oral) she and her parents LOVED KSD's program! That's from the mom of a HOH kid! And you do seem to be very afraid that Kat won't develop fluent oral abilty.
AND it is a FACT that social emotional issues are a BIGGIE for oral kids. It is a FACT!
I go see an audi at Clarke School for the Deaf, AND I vended at their conference last year. Virtually ALL the conference was about social issues for oral Deaf kids. Heck, just talk to Jillo and the kids she sees in therapy!
Things are a lot more complicated then you think. It's exactly like how the pro ex welfare pundits applaud that people stuck in welfare went down when welfare reform was insistuted. The numbers did not lie......but there was still a lot of struggling and trying to find resouces to survive.
Well obviously. Deaf Schools tend to have much better accomondations then hearing schools. A lot of times dhh kids in the mainstream get lumped in with the resource room kids, where the teachers don't have a lot of experiance teaching kids with more traditional disabilties. You are so lucky to have experainced a really good deaf school. Beyond lucky actually. You really have no idea how frustrating and hard it is to get good accomondations for dhh kids in the mainstream (meaning at a school without a dhh program)
Agreed....and mainstreaming with minimal accomondations for kids who qualify. I do think that the worship of the mainstream is a little too much. Yes, some kids can do well mainstreamed to the max and oral only.......but again I see a lot of history repeating itself on my various and sundry listservs!!!!