I have a few things I would like to share with the world, but none of them are pressing or important enough to blog about by themselves, so I'm going to make a jumbled post about all my recent thoughts.
First, I want to declare that I support the California bill, AB 2072. I believe that parents need unbiased information. I think they deserve to be given choices and to decide what will work for their family. For a child to be successful, they need involved, passionate parents. If parents are uninformed or worse, forced to do something they don't believe in, their children will suffer. Personally, I chose to give my daughter ASL. I believe it is the right choice for children with a hearing loss. I think it is fully accessible, right from the start, and that you are gambling if you choose a spoken language only path. From my experience, I believe that there are children who can hear well with amplification, but are unable to access spoken language. It is impossible to know which children will do well with spoken language and which will need ASL. If you give them all ASL, no one loses out.
BUT, that is only my opinion. I have seen passionate Cuers whose children have no language delays and are doing wonderfully. I know some hard-core AV families, and their children are doing beautifully as well. Just because I chose ASL for my family, and I have a strong personal opinion does NOT mean I should get to make the choice for other families.
ANYWAY....I wanted to share a cute story too. Miss Kat was asleep next to me on the couch a few weeks ago. She was rolling around, deep asleep, but trying to get comfortable. All of a sudden we hear, "....dinosaurs...". She was talking in her sleep! It is becoming pretty clear that her "internal voice" in now using spoken English. There have been little sign like that for several months now.
We are also in the process of changing insurance carriers so Miss Kat can get her bilateral CI. People have asked me why we decided to go ahead with the second when Miss Kat has "so much residual hearing" and "still has some speech perception with her hearing aid". To us it wasn't a hard decision. With her CI, Miss Kat has very good open set speech comprehension. In closed set testing she is at 96%. With her hearing aid? Nope. She tests with closed sets at about 20%. In daily life (open set) she is able to lipread a little, but it is as if she is unamplified for speech. So, to me, she has one usable ear, and one useless. Why would we choose to have her stay that way if we have a choice? Why not get both ears up to 96%? Seems simple to us...
Oh, also, Miss Kat started taking Kenpo! She is having a great time. Her teacher uses ASL in class and all the other kids are Deaf too. I'm so happy we found it! We are so lucky that we have an active Deaf community. They really are the best!
So, that's it. Life has been very simple lately. We have a good routine going with school (Miss Kat has gotten 100's on ALL her spelling tests since the first one I blogged about!), therapy, Kenpo, and church. I'm sure once school is out and we head to CID I will have lots to write about!
Kat Reading
8 comments:
I approve AB 2072. I feel something funny about anti AB 2072people. Their rantings not make sense. Yhe bill list all method
I read Candy's post: http://candysweetblog.wordpress.com/ She reveal the truth on anti AB 2072 group. Talk about dirty business.
Their real agenda force ASL/English on all hearing impaired babies. No respect parents' choices. Disgusting.
the only problems with AVT and cue speech is:AVT is not for late deafened (they already know how to speak and such). Cued speech is not for people who failed AVT/speechreading (they don't know how to use it properly. It's still feel like guessing game to them as far as which handshape they should us... like lipreading). Therefore these things are not language for the wide diversity of deaf people (HOH, late deafened, deafblind, etc.) to communicate with each other.
Kenpo! I love it- I bet Miss Kat does, too!
I agree that the right to use any communication method should be protected- different things work for different kids. We have kept sign in NOlan's goals, even though he never signs expressively. He doesn't hear in background noise, so even though he's oral- we use sign in those situations. He's "hard of hearing" and not deaf, so he's always had sound accessible, though with his fluctuating loss things aren't always clear to him.
We like to have ALL the tools in the communication toolbox!
That's great news about the spelling tests!
I think ASL is a beautiful language and I don't really understand why someone would not choose to not teach it to their children. But "to each his own!"
I agree with you about AB 2072. I think ASL at the start regardless of what option one picks is a great idea but it should not be something mandated by anyone.
You're providing your daughter with everything and that is awesome.
I find that after so many years, my HA's are not working as great and notice change in my voice (or rather, my hearing kids noticed it) and for that reason I am telling myself to look at other options as well.
Is it possible someone can explain AVT and how it works compared to speech therapy? I find many deaf people are confusing the two. I believe AVT encourage one to forego lipreading?
The opposition to AB2072 seems to center around two things: information being dispensed by audiologists, not an unbiased group since their training is about speech and hearing and little else. They are medical, not educational people in orientation.
The second thing is that Deaf professionals were not included in the drafting or wording of the bill; it was constructed by hearing people and advisers from the oral-aural professions. It only mentions ASL minimally, as if paying lip service to "balance".
It was another instance in a long history of hearing people making decisions for and about deaf people without their input.
On the surface, AB2072 supposedly assures balanced information for new parents of deaf babies. In practice, it is flawed because new parents shouldn't be confronted with "choices" at the beginning, but better served by giving them a comprehensive program that includes all methods for about a year.
By the end of that year, choices will be clearer and the parents will have the background to understand them.
Dianrez, yes, that is what they are telling you. Out of all the opposition, there are some who have managed to try to work with Mendoza and others like DBC who do not know how to collaborate.
There's a lot of misinformation going around for one. All the programs within CA as it relates to deaf/hoh intervention, etc education, etc has remain intact.
All this bill does is to force unbiased information being presented to parents.
Many of the points on DBC's blog site is full of misinformation.
One of the reason in writing this bill without consulting is due to past experience and that is to force these people to come to the table and collaborate. The opposition in the past didn't want collaboration, they wanted it their way or the highway.
I mean, look at the reform they're working on...they are not going to bend to anything but their way.
Yes, as long as one certain person is in that committee, no compromise is possible. That person demands ASL be included as mandatory, not as an option.
I don't blame Mendoza for not asking the Deaf stakeholders. Past experience taught him they aren't interested in building the bridge half way. Instead of pointing fingers at him for not inviting them, they should ask themselves what went wrong with the first two times.
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