Deaf Mom of Two Deaf Children

I am a mom of three children. We are deaf parents of two that are deaf as well. Our second child has bilateral implants (at 14 months and 15 months). He is now 3 1/2 years old and wants to have his processors on all the time. We have no doubts about proceeding with bilaterals again for our youngest who is 8 months now. We are looking at 12 months to begin the CI journey for him.

When we learned our second born was deaf (via ABR testing), we were told to check out about cochlear implants. I was very skeptical about it initially because of the different things I had heard about it then. I decided to be open minded and say no if we did not want to pursue it. After 10 months of researching the different aspects of the CI, ( talked with CI adult users, e-mailed parents of CI children, joined list servs such as CIcircle, checked out several implant centers, etc.), we decided to pursue it. Aren't we glad? Yes!

I am profoundly deaf but can speak and use the phone (some of the time) and communicate both in signing and orally with the children. My husband signs only. We make it all work! Nevertheless, here is the point I wanted to make. In our generation, oralism is viewed very negatively which is understandably so depending on the residual hearing one has, however, we CANNOT view oralism with CI children as it is a completely different way of raising deaf children today. Entirely. My son could pick up the k's and g's and could tell them apart and those consonants are difficult to learn in therapy sessions. It is a small example but an example of what my son can do. He amazes me every day with what he can pick up from incidental listening. He can pick things up without lip reading. We deaf parents must let go of our experiences of how we were taught in oralism and embrace what CIs can do for today's children. It still takes hard work yet it is half the battle when you are able to pick up auditorily.

One woman of a deaf husband heard my son say "I want that" pointing to some food on my lunch plate. She asked if I was teaching him to be oral. I thought to myself, well of course! Why put all that money into it for these CIs...isn't that the point? I had to remember she was viewing through the older generation of deaf "eyes"...