Someone asked me in the comment section of a previous post if, when we take Miss Kat to a Deaf event, we took her implants off.
Answer- No, we never do. Why would we?
That seems like a very odd question to me. Why would she need to have her implants off to communicate in ASL? She is deaf with the implants off AND with them on. What benefit would there be to taking the processors off?
Is there something I am missing?
**Edited to add: When we are at a Deaf community event, I do like her to wear her CIs, not just for the linguistic and sound awareness opportunities (which is a major reason, no doubt) but also because I see it as a chance to be an ambassadors for hearing parents who choose implants for their children. I can show them that we parents are responsible, loving people who choose implants not because we hate deafness or don't accept our children, but that we want to provide additional opportunities and avenues of learning. Plus, they can also see that kids with CIs can listen and speak AND use ASL.
So, again, I see no reason at all NOT to wear the processors. (It's not like if she doesn't wear them it somehow erases the fact that she has the internals in her and that she prefers to listen and speak.)
4 comments:
I do agree with you about not taking off the CI during the Deaf event. I think it is great for her to hear things in the surrounding environment as well as if there are other Deaf/deaf/CI/HOH/Hearing person, who speaks, she would be able to understand and to conversate with that person. Most importantly, enjoy life!
WisDeaf
Odd question, possibly ignorance at best. I wear my hearing aid ALL the time at deaf events and so do a lot of deaf people I know. Many in the deaf culture wear hearing aids so why would implants be any different?
I check into your blog every once in a while, but never commented.
I think it's really great what you're doing for Kat. So many people seem to think that ASL and CIs are mutually exclusive. It's becoming less dramatic for Deaf folk to choose to get a CI as an adult and still be accepted as Deaf, but I don't think too much has changed for CIs and kids. Part of it, in my opinion, is that there are lots of Deaf people that think most parents are trying to keep their kids from being Deaf under the auspices of "giving them greater opportunities". And I do think that happens, but your family is different.
But you've literally given your daughter every opportunity. The fact that she's not going to have to discover ASL and Deaf culture in, like, college is awesome.
I wear my hearing aids all the time, but I do sometimes turn them off. They're safest on my ears, but if I'm at an ASL tour at a crowded museum the sound is frequently overwhelming. It's nice to have the option. My friend with bilateral CIs does the same thing. :)
We leave our son's CI on at Deaf events, but there is a scenario where I could see taking them off: a friend's DHH son was getting distracted by the interpreter during an ASL storytelling. The goal was for them to directly consume the ASL (the son and hearing mother are both learning ASL), but the voice of the ASL-English interpreter was distracting the son. If that happened with my son, that is a context where I would take my son's CI off so he could more easily focus on the ASL. Sometimes I wish I could turn off my ears temporarily so I would not have auditory distraction and could more easily focus on the ASL in front of me, especially at large Deaf community events!
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