I'm on the cover of today's Guardian newspaper!

[Clix Pix]

There's been a few films made by deaf filmmakers exploring what would happen if one could take a pill and become hearing.

Y'know, most of the time I really rather enjoy the fact that I can "turn off" my hearing, so to speak.... I don't think I'd really want to have to hear all the time. When I was in college, it was a real blessing to shut off my hearing aid while I studied for exams or concentrated on writing papers. Other kids could be making a racket in the hallways and it didn't bother me. Even today I still turn off my aids when I want or need to concentrate on something..... And at night, I go to bed and the world is blissfully quiet. I do have enough hearing that I can hear a smoke alarm when it goes off or I can hear a very loud alarm clock (one reason I recently bought the iHome radio/alarm/iPod dock was for the alarm, as many alarm clocks aren't loud enough for me, but this one is -- I don't wake to my iPod, I can't, but the buzzer alarm is just right for me to hear it when I crank up the volume).

For those who are now wondering, well, how do profoundly deaf people use alarm clocks or hear a smoke alarm or know that someone's ringing the doorbell? There are specific devices for this purpose: some are connected to lights, some are used in the bed under the pillow and vibrate in order to awaken the sleeper.

Sign language is beautiful and expressive -- I love to watch signed interpretations of songs or interpreted Masses. I know some Sign but it's one of those situations where if you don't use it all the time you quickly forget many of the signs and specific nuances. When communicating with someone deaf I tend to fingerspell a lot!

Vint Cerf, the real father of the internet, is another well known deaf guy - without him, Macrumors wouldn't exist

So true! He and his wife Sigrid used to live in this area and she would come into the library where I worked; we would chat a bit. I never had the pleasure of meeting him. That was a long time ago, while the internet was still young and still just developing....at that time it was still mainly communications between universities and a few people using "bulletin boards" with Unix and Pine "shell" accounts. Eventually Sigrid had a cochlear implant, which she said did make a difference for her. I believe she was post-lingually deaf, which is a different situation than someone being born deaf and never having heard.

MANY years ago I was working in one public library branch where we had this old TTY (teletypewriter/telephone device for the hearing-impaired) that we used for communicating with our deaf clientele so that they could call us just as other patrons did. I loved that thing. I'd sit down, reflexively turn off my aid and have a great time writing back-and-forth (heh, when it was a friend, we weren't always discussing library business but others didn't realize that unless they happened to lean over my shoulder). It was kind of the precursor to Instant Messaging, now that I'm thinking about it.... That old clunky TTY was later replaced by smaller, lighter, portable TDDs. Again, deaf and hearing-impaired people were at the forefront of developing new ways of communicating with others....

Oh, and for that matter, librarians, too. You can thank us for the whole database/search protocols thing! We were developing databases and doing searches online long before Google was a twinkle in anyone's eyes....

The internet has been a real blessing to those of us who are hearing-impaired or speech impaired or who have other communication issues.

sksksk

 

[Clix Pix]

The deaf of your child is obviously an act of nature, but I cannot understand why would anyone ever want his/her child to have any kind of disability. That is just cruel.

The key here is" "deaf like me."

Most parents want their child to be like them, no? There is a unique bonding that goes on among people who share specific similarities. While on the surface it may sound to a hearing person that this desire on the part of deaf parents for their child to be deaf like them is "cruel," the reality is that if the child had been born hearing, this would have set up an irreparable difference between parents and child. The reality is that this child is going to be happier growing up as a deaf child with deaf parents who are active in the deaf community than she would have been growing up as a hearing child of deaf parents, because while she would have still been learning and using Sign and still would be active in the deaf community, she would still be different and would actually bear the stigma of being Hearing in a (for her family) predominantly deaf world.

It goes back to what I referred to in one of my other posts, this whole thing about "belonging." Being different and having a sense of "not belonging" sets one apart, even from one's own family if one is the only person in that family who is different from the rest in some way. We ALL want to belong somewhere and when we don't, that hurts and it is unsettling. MANY deaf children born into hearing homes have felt this difference, some more than others. I suspect that many hearing children born into deaf homes have also felt this, but to a different extent and in a different way. Why is that?

While things are certainly better today than they were say, thirty, forty or fifty years ago, for many people there is still very much a sense of something being terriby wrong when a child is born deaf into a hearing family. Some parents will go all out, will take on the challenge of learning sign language and explore the best ways of communicating with their child, but others, angry and in denial, will simply seek technological answers to "fix" this problem, and when that may or may not work, they send the child off to deaf school but don't make a real effort themselves to learn Sign, or they'll put the child into an oral school program, fit him or her with hearing aids and insist upon a standard of oral skills which may or may not be possible for the deaf child to achieve. This only leads to frustration on all sides. There are many deaf adults who have bitter memories of coming home from deaf school and feeling quite disconnected from family members, or if they attended oral school, struggling to do what they feel everyone else wants, whether or not this is a realistic goal for them. Lipreading/Speechreading is not a skill that everyone has and it is far from 100% accurate, so that much communication is still lost as the deaf person struggles to read someone's lips. As only one example of many, the words "Mama" and "Papa" look very much the same on the lips. Not to mention, good speech is difficult to attain if you've never heard the sounds which are used in it or never heard how speakers modulate their tones.

Ever thought about the huge effort which would have to go into following a simple conversation if one can't hear and there are no visual cues? Trying to read lips for any length of time can be exhausting. Try this test: turn the volume off on the TV, see how much you can understand of what is being said. Oh -- very little? Not surprising! Even the most skilled lipreader is going to have some problems. This is why Sign has so much appeal, because it enables the deaf to have the same ease in communication with each other and other signers as oral speech does for hearing people.

In contrast to this scenario of the deaf child being raised in a hearing home and shunted off to deaf school coming home to a household in which Sign is still foreign or to a household in which he or she is expected to be able to communicate by lipreading and speaking, a child brought up in a deaf home learns Sign, quickly is able to communicate effectively with his or her family, and is immediately and automatically accepted within the community of the parents' deaf and hearing friends. He or she, however, also crosses the bridge into the hearing world and is seemingly able to fit in there, but a difference exists, and most are well aware of this. In the past, many hearing children of deaf parents found themselves thrust into the role of interpreter, engaging in transactions between their parents and someone in the hearing world. Fortunately, these days that situation is a little easier than it used to be, but occasions still do arise. This puts a remarkable responsibility on the shoulders of a young child and is usually not a comfortable situation for the parents, either.

I hope this may have provided some insights as to why deaf parents would be hoping for a deaf child and why when you get right down to it, this is actually a better situation for the child, too....

 

[Clix Pix]

Hearing is extremely important, if there is at least some fraction of hearing gained by implants then I would go for that. Especially in a world where you can avoid danger. What about crossing the road? or being attacked because you didn't hear someone approaching?

Yes, hearing is important, but if you don't have it, you learn to compensate with what you DO have. Deaf people depend quite heavily on their other senses because of the lack of hearing, so they are going to be hypervigilant and alert by looking carefully when they cross a road, by keeping their wits about them when walking along a lonely, dark street at night -- just as anyone with good common sense does. The fact is that for the deaf, there are fewer distractions than there are for the hearing.

In driving an automobile, deaf people are probably safer drivers than many hearing people who don't hear the sirens of an emergency vehicle because they've got the radio or CD player or iPod Road Trip blaring very loudly and aren't really paying enough attention to frequently checking their mirrors for visual cues.

So while your concern about safety and awareness is fine, why would you think that someone who is hearing-impaired hasn't already figured out strategies for maintaining his/own safety and that of his/her family and child(ren)?

 

[Abstract]

I don't really know how I feel about this. I find it very difficult to pick one side.

Since the first few years of her life is when she does best at learning language, it may be in her best interest to be able to hear at the beginning with the help of a hearing aid, but maybe later in life, give her a choice. I don't think she can be 13 years old (for example), and then try to learn how to speak and interpret. It's much better to start young.

 

[Clix Pix]

Since the first few years of her life is when she does best at learning language, it may be in her best interest to be able to hear at the beginning with the help of a hearing aid,

It "may be in her best interest" ONLY if she would be able to hear any speech with a hearing aid. Many profoundly deaf people cannot hear much even with the aid of a very powerful body aid or what they do hear is merely distorted noise -- therefore, speech is still not understandable to them. Why is it that many readers of this thread don't seem to get this basic point?

 

[devilot]

Many profoundly deaf people cannot hear much even with the aid of a very powerful body aid or what they do hear is merely distorted noise -- therefore, speech is still not understandable to them. Why is it that many readers of this thread don't seem to get this basic point?

Maybe because it's one thing to hear, a whole other issue to listen?