Not to promote anything like a board war, since there appears to be some crossover already (deafdyke, if you’d like a hand with the registration fee so you can better feed your it’s-like-crack addiction, email or message me. I’d be honored. And bring your friends. We honestly don’t know what each others physical limitations are unless we are told). From the two threads I’m seeing a lot more commonality than differences and the broad brushes on both sides are imagined or internet hyperbole.
But would you put your very young child through surgery to get it?
Even if it meant sawing holes in your skull and implanting wires in your brain?
The doctors don’t just wave a magic wand and you wake up able to hear. It doesn’t work that way.
The wikipedia article in its current form looks pretty accurate to me: Cochlear implant - Wikipedia
Heh. I’m hearing my mother’s voice echoing as I answer: Well, if everyone else was doing it… 
But, yeah, if everyone else (defined as “greater than 90% of my community”) could “blurp” and “blurping” was a large component of communication and people who didn’t blurp were substantially restricted from social interaction, then yes, I’d do it, and I’d have it done for my children.
Heck, quite a bit of my relenting and allowing my son to get his first video game system at age 11 was because Dopers suggested that in this day and age, a young man who doesn’t play video games is facing a social handicap. I don’t think he needs to do everything possible to fit in, but I didn’t want to thwart his social development, either. And, lo and behold, they were right - he stopped being anxious, his social worker at school recommended they stop their sessions, his grades improved and he has more friends.
Comparing playing a video game to have a surgery is truely ridiculous.
Oh, and 90% of the people that my child interacts with on a given day CAN use ASL.
'Kay, then I’m glad I didn’t do it.
Please, just *try *reading for comprehension.
To gain a new sense that most people don’t have… no, that’s patently silly.
To restore a sense that most people do have… well, I’d have to think about it.
You said you did it so your child would fit in. MANY parents get CI’s for their children so that they will not be “social outcasts”…am I concluding something different than you intended?
Yes, in your previous post you said I compared playing a video game to surgery. I didn’t (or I didn’t intend to). I illustrated one way in which I’m concerned with my children’s social development and don’t want to stunt it.
If I had a child who might be helped by cochlear implants, I’d try it. Just like (now THIS is a comparison) I got eye surgery for my daughter with retinopathy that threatened her sight.
Er…no. 
I mean yes. Yes, you are concluding something entirely different than I intended.
I gave my daughter CIs because she is deaf, and we decided to raise her in a household that spoke English. I didn’t go into our motives any further than that.
Hmmm. Are you responding to my post, or to WhyNot’s?
ETA: Yes, in fact, faire_jour was responding to WhyNot. Clearly, I need to work on my OWN reading comprehension. That’s it - no more posting without caffeine in my bloodstream
Given that faire_jour has been quoting WhyNot’s posts in each of her recent ones, I’d say the latter is a safe bet.
I’m not WhyNot, but I understand her point. She did something that was weary about doing, but went through with it because the research she did showed that it would be helpful to her son’s development.
It was not a direct comparison as comparing surgery to video games directly is just stupid.
As I said, I do not have a problem with the technology. I am considering an implant for my, now, 5 year old. (We are fighting to keep her first language, ASL, while the dictors believe we should drop all signing)
I have a problem with an oral only approach that is extremely limiting for many children with a hearing loss, and impossible for some. I advocate bilingual education, which is successful for ALL children.
I also have a problem with parents who view their children with implants as NOT being no longer deaf. I also believe that all children with a hearing loss should be exposed to the Deaf community. The deserve to be given the option of being involved. Stats show that 90% of deaf people marry other deaf people, so it is likely that there will be at least one more person in their family who is deaf!
Almost all deaf children grow up without signing, many with poor educations and without fluency in any language. Some find the Deaf community and learn ASL, some continue their lives as oral only. Our countries deaf education system is broken, it has failed so many.
I am sorry that some have had bad experiences with Deaf individuals, I have not. I have had some terrible situations with oral/CI families, but I would never paint them all in one group. Our local Deaf community has kids and adults with CI’s in them…all are welcome.
See, this is just wrong. If I were a parent whose child was deaf, I’d be on the phone to find an ASL class for myself and my (hypothetical) wife ASAP. Because I’d want to be able to have that child learn ASL as a first language, given that I know that profoundly deaf infants do not have a window where they will learn spoken English with any fluency. Not even attempting to learn ASL, for a hearing parent of a deaf child, seems cruel and isolating.
And while I would like my hypothetical child to know other deaf people, there are an awful lot of people in the capital-D Deaf community who have such utter contempt for hearing people (and especially, it seems, hearing parents of deaf children) that I wouldn’t want my child to even ever meet them.
But there is this pernicious belief that if you sign to deaf kids you’ll damage them. That signing is a crutch, if kids can sign they won’t learn to vocalize and lipread. That if you don’t allow them any communication except oralism, then they’ll learn oral skills, and since the vast majority of society is nonsigning this is the best way to help the kids.
This used to be the DEFAULT belief in deaf education, believe it or not, and not that long ago. Thankfully it is a shrinking minority today.
But cochlear implants bring back the spectre of oralist-only education. The kids are cured! But it turns out that their oral skills aren’t very good…and so the fault must be that they’re signing, if we don’t teach the kids to sign then they’ll be forced to learn oral skills–after all, these kids aren’t deaf anymore, and signing is only for deaf kids.
But CI isn’t exactly a panacea. It doesn’t cure deafness, even though it can be a big help. Kids who would have ended up with zero oral skills without CI can sometimes benefit so much that they understand telephone conversations and such. But these kids would almost certainly benefit from sign, even if they have very good outcomes from CI. But sign is hard to learn for many hearing adults. It’s easier to pretend that sign isn’t needed, or wouldn’t help, or would hurt.
This is slightly off-topic (I’m bad about that, aren’t I?) but since it’s rather relevant, I’m going to ask anyway.
To the d/Deaf posters here, as I mentioned previously, my best friend is deaf with a CI. He’s taught me a multitude of ASL, and I’ve learned some on my own from books/videos/etc. I’m of the opinion that communication is a good thing, and hope to eventually be passable enough to converse with d/Deaf folks I don’t know.* I’ve been working on teaching the signs I know to my three year old, who has no hearing problems whatsoever. Does you, as d/Deaf individuals, look down on this in any way? My friend is grateful for anything that can be done to make communicating easier, but it seems from some posts in this thread that perhaps I’m infringing where I don’t belong. Any insight would be appreciated.
*My friend has told me many times that becuse he is familiar with me, it makes it somehow easier for him to understand me, as opposed to random folks he meets on the street.
Yup. My own parents ascribed all my failures in not joining the hearing world to not practicing enough. It doesn’t help that the media is littered with completely inapplicable “deaf person joins hearing world” stories–which almost always involve someone who was late-deafened and still had the neural capability for processing sounds.
Oralist worked in a way for me; I’m the best lipreader I know, even among deaf people. However, people just don’t realize that completely different words are identical when lipread. It’s not at all like Hollywood spies. It’s merely a phonetic clue, and without context, it doesn’t help at all. For example, look in a mirror and go: “cookie” and “turkey”. Also try “museum” and “boot camp”. There are far too many “lip-homonyms” to make it one source of communication.
I see I didn’t quite respond to this last part. I don’t think this is accurate. The utter contempt for hearing parents of deaf children is reserved for parents who choose oralist-only education for their children. THOSE are the parents that the Deaf community rail against. Not parents who choose CI, but parents who choose CI+Oralist-only.
And the problem with deciding that you don’t want your child to even meet them is that one day your child is going to turn 18. And if your child is deaf, then isolating your child from the only community they can effortlessly communicate with is going to backfire. Your child is going to make their own decisions, and if it turns out you made horrible decisions for your child. And even if you start learning sign today you’ll never approach native fluency with sign unless you’re naturally talented.
And there’s the other problem, too many deaf kids grow up with NO NATIVE LANGUAGE. They can’t speak or understand english fluently because they can’t hear. And they can’t sign fluently because nobody around them can sign fluently. And so they reach age 6 or 8, and by that time the parents are forced to admit that their kid is never going to vocalize fluently, and they get education in sign, except the kid is 8 years old and doesn’t really know sign either! And this is why deaf literacy rates are so poor, because way too many deaf kids don’t have any language beyond pidgin signing, it isn’t just a matter of teaching them to read and write in english, they have to be taught sign first before they can even begin the difficult process of learning to read and write a language they can’t hear. Plus the problem that lots of deaf kids are multiply handicapped…deafness is just one more symptom of the underlying systemic problem.
Thankfully with mandatory hearing tests at birth this is less and less common, but it still happens.
I’m curious. Are there any studies with deaf people who had CIs, then had them removed? To have an implant seems like the only way to actually experience hearing for a deaf person, but if they are as bad as some say, I would expect them to be removed after a trial period. Any examples of this?
I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’ve seen deaf individuals suggest to parents who’re using ‘baby sign’ that they try using ‘real’ ASL, since a lot of baby signs are based on ASL and tend to be simplified. I know that you’re not alluding to baby sign, but it’s a common stance I’ve seen.
The people I’ve talked to tend not to be the militant Deaf types, and they’re generally pleased when people try to sign even if it’s just a greeting – they’re making an effort to communicate, which is awesome. I say knock yourself out and teach your kid sign. Personally, as long as you’re sincerely asking me what something means or how to sign $WORD, I’ll be more than happy to help you out and get the sign glued into your brain.
Any accusations of infringement should be laid at the feet of the militant Deaf – most deaf folks are pretty much fine with you trying to learn sign. We’ll try to encourage you to hang out with other deaf folks so that you can practice your sign and get up to speed. Like all languages, it’s hard to learn in a vaccuum.