Deaf

rdecker6807

Just found out our 2 year old daughter is Profoundly Deaf this past August. Thinking about Cochlear IMplants, while still sending her to a deaf school to understand the culture and ASL. Thoughts?

 

We are learning ASL right now as well. She has done amazing!!!!!  I love the language! Its getting better with us communicating but her blow ups are still pretty bad somedays.

Soapstone

My baby girl has profound bilateral hearing loss as well. We are planning to get CIs for her but are also learning some sign language. We hope to have her in mainstream school as there are no deaf schools near us. We are planning to put her in an auditory oral preschool program when she's old enough. The way I see it, it is vital to have CIs done as soon as possible. This gives your child the best chance of getting the most out of them. If you wait until your child is old enough to decide for herself, you will have lost a lot of time during a critical period of development. If my daughter decides not to wear her CIs when she's older and that she wants to communicate with ASL, I'm fine with that. I just want her to have the option of hearing.

Assembly_Reqd

Nate is not eligible for CI's because his aids bring him up to around 25 decibles. Since we are fortunate to have a 2 deaf schools within an hour of where we live, we are going that route until at least kindie. You cannot beat the class sizes! Ours has 6-7 children per class with TWO teachers. (one deaf, one hearing). The class size alone made our decision much easier.  There are a lot of children at our school with CI's and there is a audiologist on campus. Our deaf school also has an awesome infant program that meets twice a week. The classes are for 6 months to 2 years old. They also have a daily program with a two year old class and a three year old class. Once they turn 4 they move over to the preschool/ kindie building. You should see if your local deaf school has an infant program. We love ours.

Nate has other issues with his brain, so we are also not sure where he would learn best. He is definitely a visual baby so I think ASL may be a good fit for him. Also, I feel better about the smaller classes and that he would be pushed harder because he wouldn't end up being the quiet one lost in a larger crowd. Nor would he be the only "kid with the thingeys on his ears"

Part of me wants him to go to a mainstream school, but when you have a hard of hearing baby, you are forced to straddle the fence. I feel like if I don't jump in and get into the ASL world, Nate will suffer in the long run. Especially if it turns out that ASL is the best language for him to learn in.

If we do decide to keep Nate in a Deaf school, I think we also will have to commit ourselves to being part of the Deaf community. If Nate's teachers and friends are all deaf I would want to be able to communicate with them. (and do it well!) I would also not want my child/teenager to be able to shut me out and have conversations in ASL that I wouldn't understand... ;P

ylgirl

We are in the same boat.  My son was diagnosed later than most as profound.  We got him a cochlear implant, and are working on speech.  But I also feel it is very important for him to know ASL.  Anyone you meet will probably have a different opinion about it.  But I know what I want for my son and unless he tells me different that's how we will go about it.  He does go to our local deaf school and loves it!  His teacher is in the same boat as me that he should learn ASL as well as working on his oral.

toddandleah

Hi.  Our 3 year old DD is deaf from meningitis (17 mos) and now has bilateral CIs (implanted at 22 mos).  We use sign when her "ears" are off and it will be her second language.  We are an oral family, C thinks in spoken english, speaking even when she can't hear it. 

Regardless of what language you use, it is incredibly important for us to have some communication method...I can only imagine how frustrating it would be for everyone without some outlet.  C's in the middle of the 3-y-o testing phase and her tantrums would be HORRIBLE if we couldn't talk to her some way.

Is you DD a CI candidate now?  If so, and if you choose that direction (which I 100% recommend), see how quickly you can be approved.  The earlier the better, especially if your DD had sound before and lost it recently.  Time is of the essence to maximize the success of the CIs and her habilitation. 

 

Good luck!