Most here know my opinion. I feel alot like Drews dad. As a parent, we HAVE to make decision for our children. The decision to implant or not implant is the same. I chose to implant Lilly. When her other ear suffered a further hearing loss, where she no longer got any benifit from the HA, we had to decide if she should get a second CI. We decided to go for it (after some long soul searching and alot of research). We made the decision that Lilly will be oral. Bu, we also made the decsiion to learn and teach Lilly some sign. We also work on lip reading alot.
The decision to implant a child is a family decision. But, by waiting to implant, you are playing roulette with the chances of success of being oral. Are there stories of children past 3 years old, being successful.... of course. Are there adults being implanted that are successful. Sure. But, If your child does not benifit from HA due to a profound loss, and you wait until they get old enough to make the decision, you are pushing your childs luck. As I say constantly here, do your research.
On a related note, I went to a meeting today in which adults with a CI were on a panel. ALL of them agree that while they are cxompletely comfortable as a deaf person, they love having a CI. In fact, during this meeting, one of the panelists, said that if CI were available to children when he was younger, and his parents decided to not give him a CI, he would be very angry with them because that decision would have made his life much more fruistrating and harder than it had to be. He also mentioned that it is the responsibilty of the parents to make decidions for thier kids.
