no one knows what a CI is

[Guest guest]

Dale,

It was the teen who wanted the CI. Her parents didn't want her to get it.

Her mother works with Deaf children and understood that the CI may or may

not be successful and that it would be a lot of work. However, I think the

biggest issue here was the parents were not 100% behind their child in this

decision and may have unwittingly undermined her efforts to be successful.

Also, if you place a child with a CI into a school for the Deaf where it is

all ASL all the time, how in the world are they going to learn to understand

speech? You have to be exposed to speech to be able to learn to understand

it, and the more you're exposed to speech, the faster and more easily you

will adjust. There's a lot of research on that subject showing that you

have to be exposed to speech, and lots of it. The more, the better. For

those who are in their teens, as you pointed out, the window of language

development has closed, so it's going to be more difficult. That doesn't

mean it can't be done, just that it's going to take more time and more

effort. I believe that prelingual adults are more successful than

prelingual teens because the adults are more fully committed to making it

work. This teen may decide to try to use her CI again as an adult, and do

very well at that time. I know I did not do well with my hearing aids as a

teen. I hated them. I put them up and didn't wear them again until in my

20's, at which point I did pretty well.

As most of us know, you have to be fully committed to making the CI work to

get the best results. I don't think very many would say that it's an easy

process, especially for someone who is prelingual or for someone who has

been deaf for a long time. I really believe that leaving a child with a CI

in an ASL only program is a mistake. Kansas School for the Deaf has a CI

program now, and it has a more oral approach for those students who have

CI's. They use ASL as more of a back up, to make sure that the kids don't

fall behind in their school work while they're learning to use the CI. The

best CI programs I've seen use simultaneous communication with CASE. This

provides that bridge between ASL and oral that helps the student to learn to

comprehend spoken English. It takes a very, very highly competent teacher

who signs fluently and knows how to provide lots of opportunities to build

language rather than just working on speech or listening skills. I believe

this is why you don't see very many of these programs. It's hard to find a

teacher that is good enough at both teaching and signing to make it work

like it should. Take me, for instance, I'm great at language development

and providing natural opportunities to build language, but my signing

stinks. Hopefully my signing will improve if I ever have someone to

practice with. But, I live in the middle of nowhere and nobody signs

outside of the school day. They really don't sign much during the school

day. The D/HH teacher in this area doesn't have any students who are Deaf,

and she covers seven or eight counties. She has one CI student, who is

using an oral/aural approach (first grade student). In the district where I

work, we have one deaf student and he hates to sign. He wants to use the

oral/aural approach. You probably already guessed it, he's a teenager. LOL

As noted, teens just want to fit in. He does well, though, probably

because his loss was progressive so he's learned to adapt as his hearing got

worse. I would love to see his parents look into a CI for him. I think he

would do extremely well because he remembers how things sound, he's a great

speech reader, and he wouldn't need extensive speech training because he

already has excellent speech. He's also highly motivated to function in the

hearing world. He tried attending the school for the Deaf, hated it, and

came home after one day. The teenage girl I was talking about had grown up

in a school for the Deaf and wanted her CI more so that she could live at

home instead of having to live at the school for the Deaf. When she still

had to live at the school for the Deaf, her motivation to use the CI was,

more or less, cut off at the knees. I will never really understand why her

parents made this decision because their home school district has a very

good D/HH program.

Beth

" Surviving a loss and letting go is only half of the story. The other half

is the secret belief that we will find, in one form or another, what we have

lost. And it is that potential, shimmery as a star on a clear night, that

helps us survive. " -- Chambers