ciavmom

The line about deaf adults being angry at their parents for not choosing to teach them ASL is so very dated. My older daughter is 20 years old. She is very grateful that we chose to have her be one of the earliest children in the U.S. to receive a CI and to raise her with the Auditory-Verbal approach. If you don't believe me, read it in her own words at http://deafprogressivism.blogspot.com/2007/07/in-response-to-hearing-mother-of.html.

I would suggest that, in this day and age, it will be the children raised with ASL as their primary language who, when they are grown, will look at those who learned to hear and speak well with their CIs and to function with ease in the hearing world who will turn to their parents and ask them why they didn't do that for them. It will then be too late, for the critical early years when the brain is at its most plastic for learning to decipher meaning from sound will be long past. My daughters have been given the gift of choice. By choosing to emphasize ASL, you remove that choice from a deaf child forever.

"Some" is in fact the great majority who are in Auditory-Verbal programs. Meanwhile, ASL and deaf schools lead many to 4th grade reading levels and an unemployment rate of 24%. My children were born into my culture, and I was most equipped to teach them a language in which I was fluent. NO ONE ELSE has the right to dictate to parents how to raise their children. My daughters have been deprived of nothing, but they would have been deprived of a great deal had they not developed the hearing, speech and English language skills that they have.

My daughters are ages 20 and 12. Both were born profoundly deaf, but neither has ever learned or needed sign. Instead, we got them cochlear implants at very young ages and taught them to hear and speak through the Auditory-Verbal approach. They both attended mainstream schools all the way through. Both hear so well that they speak on the phone with ease. My older daughter is bilingual, but her second language is not ASL but, rather, French. In fact, she was selected out of a total of 800 juniors and seniors during her her junior year of high school to receive her school's foreign language award, and in her senior year she won an oral only foreign language competition, scoring superior, the highest level. My younger daughter completed her Auditory-Verbal therapy at age 6 with English language skills that tested 6 months to two years advanced for her age.

In this day and age of early cochlear implantation, deaf children absolutely do not need to learn ASL or any form of sign if their parents are committed to working with them as needed to teach them English language skills, which will, in turn, provide their children with a broader social network and unlimited college and career opportunities. Furthermore, because children like mine can hear and speak so well, they require much less from their school system and of the federal government when they are adults. They certainly don't need interpreters.

What deaf children have a right to is to have the same unlimited opportunities open to them that all children do. Kudos to "All My Children" for showing what deaf children can achieve today!