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Welcome! How wonderful to have a mum from down-under with us!

My name is Pam, I live in Michigan here in the U.S. I have 4 sons, the older 3

are hearing, and the youngest, has a profound hearing loss. He is 6

years old. He wears digital hearing aids, and gets good benefit from them. He

is also a total communication kid, meaning he does best with a sign and voice

approach combined. I'd like to share with you an excerpt from a letter we gave

our special ed director re: why we feel needs a qualified interpreter,

and what role that interpreter would need to play in order for him to best

benefit from his educational experience:

" Past experience shows that best communicates and assimilates

information when voice and sign are paired. He uses whatever his most useful

channel of information is at the time. If teacher is voicing using an fm

system, he may get more information from the teacher than he does the

interpreter, because he is not yet able to divide his attention between the two

stimuli. If the environment is not conducive to hearing, he will attend more to

sign. His best comprehension is when the 2 are paired, and he is using lip

reading, facial expression, etc. to assist with comprehension. Long-term

fluency in sign language is critical, even if has oral abilities. He

needs to develop this necessary skill to obtain information in various settings,

including a classroom setting. Therefore, he must develop the skill of using an

interpreter in a traditional role. "

Your child is very young when you take into account her hearing loss. Most

children by the age of 3 have been bombarded by language, ours have not. It

takes a long time before they can start to assimilate what this language thing

is all about, and even longer before they can start spitting it back out.

I highly encourage you to educate yourself, find out everything you can, and

then keep doing it. Be open to all sides of the issue, and really try to learn

as much as you can. Of course, you already are doing that, or you wouldn't have

sought out the help that you have. But, I really believe that we make the best

decisions for our unique child when we've allowed ourselves to be open to all

the information. You will find that there are different beliefs about the best

way to educate your child, but be open to learning everything so you can make an

informed decision. I've found that what is best for has evolved based

on what he has shown us works best for him.

Personally, I feel deaf children should learn sign language. Now, not everyone

is going to agree with me, but here's my reasoning. If my child learns sign

language, even if you don't believe it enhances their learning, in the

long-term, it will allow him to make a choice if he wants to be part of the Deaf

community, or just have deaf friends that he can relax with, without the stress

of the communication. Also, it allows access to places that he otherwise

couldn't fully take part in - such as lectures, plays, whatever, where

real-time captioning or closed captioning isn't available. That's just my

opinion. You may decide otherwise, but in my opinion, learning sign language in

no way detracts from learning to speak or use your auditory skills. With my

son, it only allows him to take part in more complex discussions than either the

sign or voicing alone would allow. My son has some issues, to be sure, but

people are amazed at his vocabulary, and his understanding of abstract concepts.

I can tell you, in his situation, that he would not have developed those

concepts if we did not use the combination of both sign and voice together. His

comprehension and ability to express his ideas is greatly enhanced with the

combination.

I also want to say that I'm not advocating this approach. Some kids do very

well with an oral approach alone, and some do great with ASL primary

language/English secondary language. But it sounds like, right now, your child

would benefit from a total communication approach, IMHO.

I have joined a few overseas deaf lists, one being deaf-UK. I met a few

Aussies on the deaf-UK list. I asked one of them questions about deaf issues in

Australia. I found out some interesting stuff. You may want to try to hook up

with some deaf adults as well as hearing professionals. Find out all the

different perspectives. Feel free to contact me personally, if you want. Sorry

to go on and on and on and on here..

Best of luck! You'll find the right way -

Pam Lilley

mom of Drew 12/hearing, 11/hearing, Shane 7/hearing, 6/deaf

Message: 1

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 21:09:56 +1000

Subject: new to the list

Hi all,

I 'm from Sydney , Australia and my 3 year old daughter has a severe to profound

hearing loss. She was diagnosed late at 18mths when we noticed that she wasn't

talking. Since then its been a long and hard. We're doing auditory verbal

thearpy but despite our efforts she is just not talking much. We've tried

hearing aids and now have had a CI for 6 months , she listerns but I really

don't think it sounds like much to her. We're introducing some signs now and

would like to also work on her listerning skills as well. But I do worry that

doing both might mean she can do neither well. Has anyone had similar

experience? Can doing both work?

cheers

mum of Gillian 3yr

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