What does it mean to be "oral"?

D

deafdyke

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A contiunation of the Parants and CI thread.

DD,

I'm not going to compare myself to others here on AD. You need to remember that I'm also totally blind, so I did not have the advantage of lipreading which you are so fond of encouraging when it comes to having a full "communication toolbox." I would appreciate it if you would not judge me. I haven't done that to anyone here, so I would appreciate the same courtesy in return.
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Huh??
No, I'm not judging you at all. I don't know where you got that. Very puzzled. I'm just saying that while you were raised without Sign, you a) only had mild loss from birth (right?) and b) you're also pretty much postlingally deaf. What I was trying to say is that posties/ perilingal (those who lost their hearing on the cusp of aquirring language tend to have a different experiance from dhh kids who have always been dhh or lost their hearing early on. I wasn't being deafer then thou.
DD,

If we're going to compare people with hearing loss, what about you? You have a moderate hearing loss and can still hear quite well. Does that mean it's fair for me to say you don't have the same challenges as I did when I had severe-profound hearing loss? Until you've walked a mile in another person's shoes, you have no idea what they experience.
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No. no, not at all....... See above. I actually have a moderately severe loss, that is genetic and congential in nature....this isn't a audiogram contest or something. It's not It's simply the difference between the postie/peri vs. prelingally/ congentially deaf experiance, that's all.
FYI, I did have speech therapy in elementary school. The only reason I've never mentioned it here is because I only had speech therapy for a very short period of time.
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On the other hand, was it for articualtion issues (very common overall in the hearing population) or language therapy specificly for blind children?
Speech therapy can mean a whole lot of things from remediation of a lisp to teaching a kid how to swallow. Did you have language therapy that was designed for dhh kids? Again.....I'm not saying that you're not "really deaf".....I think that's how you're interpreting what I'm saying.
I'm simply saying that your experiance as a pretty much postlingal dhh kid was different then growing up dhh orally with a prelingal very significent loss. ( eg. a loss that significently affects spoken language aquastion)
Although I am only hoh, I did have very intense spoken language intervention in preschool and kindergarten as well as dhh "speech" (modulation, tone, volumne etc) up til I graduated high school.
Other dhh kids may have attended an oral program/ gone to AVT/ been enrolled in things like the John Tracy program etc.
You did grow up without sign language.....but that would have been more " oral as default." as opposed to
I thought any HOH or deaf person who was forbidden the exposure of ASL was considered as oral-only?
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Well the thing is..... Hear Again, wasn't forbidden to use ASL or other methods. It was more like oral as default...... Make sense? You DID however have the experiance of discovering ASL as a really useful tool and wishing you had it earlier right?
I wouldn't call you traditionally oral (meaning had to have intense spoken language thearapy) but you did grow up without sign...... Hmmmm.......tough debate you know? Can a postie or kid with mild loss be automaticly oral, even thou they may not have had intense speech therapy or oral schooling ? Interesting debate...........
 
DD,

According to what my CI audi told me, even a mild hearing loss can have a negative impact on a child's language development and ability to learn. As someone who claims to be an advocate for the deaf and HoH, I would have thought you understood that.

Case in point: I did not start talking until age 3. I also required speech therapy when I was in elementary school. I never mention that on AD only because I saw a speech therapist for a few months, so it was not intensive by any means.

Please do not presume to know about my background or how my hearing loss affected me. I would also appreciate it if you refrain from minimizing the effects my mild hearing loss had on me.

When you are totally blind and have a mild hearing loss, come back and tell me what your life is like.

As the saying goes, you cannot know what another person experiences until you've walked a mile in their shoes.

I'm sure you wouldn't like it if I made assumptions about you.

After all, you aren't really "deaf" (i.e. deafdyke) given the fact that you have moderate hearing loss.
 
DD,

You do not know anything about my background in regards to being permitted to use ASL. All of my teachers knew I was totally blind and had progressive hearing loss yet they did not teach me any techniques for coping (such as tactile sign).

I am postlingually deaf yet that does not mean my experiences are less significant than someone who is prelingually Deaf.

Stop making comparisons about whose experiences are worse. I know many people who are prelingually Deaf who write much better than I do. They also excel in school and hold respectable jobs.

Making excuses for someone because they are prelingually Deaf is doing them an injustice. I can tell you that if my child is prelingually Deaf, I will never allow that to dictate what they are capable of. In my eyes, they can be anything they want to be and their inability to hear should not have any basis on what they can and cannot do.

As my 10th grade Biology teacher told me, "The only limitations you have are those you place upon yourself."
 
DD, HA is correct. I have worked with children who have mild hearing loss with language delays and deficits due to not being exposed to ASL.

IMO, any child with any hearing loss who wasnt exposed to ASL is considered oral-only.
 
DD,

Why are you asking me various questions about what kind of speech therapy I had? Do I need to justify myself to you? What difference does it make whether or not my speech therapy was designed for someone who is deaf or HoH? I could not pronounce words correctly due to my hearing loss (particularly words with the letter "S" and "R" which I still have difficulty with today). I had absolutely no difficulty with written language and excelled in that regard.

In fact, I continuously scored 4 years above grade level when it came to reading comprehension and writing.
 
shel90 said:
DD, HA is correct. I have worked with children who have mild hearing loss with language delays and deficits due to not being exposed to ASL.

IMO, any child with any hearing loss who wasnt exposed to ASL is considered oral-only.
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:ty: Shel.
 
DD,

Why do you call postlingually deaf children or adults "posties?" That's offensive.
 
DD,

A moderately-severe hearing loss is still pretty decent especially when you consider that most people (note that I did not say all) with this degree of hearing loss can benefit from HAs and an FM system.
 
Oh...and do not flame me for mentioning FM systems. I am not saying that FM systems should be used in place of ASL. If I were President, I'd make it a requirement by law that all children regardless of hearing loss learn ASL.
 
Hear Again said:
Oh...and do not flame me for mentioning FM systems. I am not saying that FM systems should be used in place of ASL. If I were President, I'd make it a requirement by law that all children regardless of hearing loss learn ASL.
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I totally agree with that and I would happily vote for it.
 
We all know that we judge each other (whether it be quietly or out loud). We can't help it. For example, when I was growing up, I had very few deaf friends and they were all like me (oral only). When I met more deaf people, I noticed that a surprising amount of them can talk on the phone. I thought to myself "Pffft and you call yourself deaf?"

On the other side, people accuse me of being "HoH". They said that because I speak too well and don't know sign, therefore I must be HoH, despite a profound loss since birth.....

That's life, I suppose?
 
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