Whole New World

I went and had dinner & drinks last night with one of my "bestest" friends, she's actually my sister I've never had. We always have the best conversations. I was telling her about my newest discovery with Aiden's world - the deaf community. After learning about Aiden's deafness, all I could think of was, he WILL hear and speak one day, and that's that, he will be a part of our hearing world. And hopefully he will (we still need to wait for the MRI to tell us if he is a true candidate for cochlear implants), but he is deaf and could also be part of a community that seems to have their own culture and I want him to know this part as well. As Aiden's family, we need to have a respect for this "culture" in a way we would respect the culture when visiting any foreign country. I'm still learning so much about this, so my big question now is, if Aiden is a candidate and successful with his implants and hearing/speaking, do we still teach ourselves and Aiden to sign or not?

Of course I have always known about sign language, but just that it was out there. What I've come to learn is there are different types of communication for deaf people. Sign language - American Sign Language (ASL) is not easy to learn and when translated word for word is completely different than spoken English, it's like learning a foreign language. I also didn't realize there is another type of sign, called SEE, which is more in tune with spoken English and is another option to teach Aiden and our family. There is an option to cue, which I don't know a lot about yet either since we have decided from day one that we want Aiden to hear and speak - this is the auditory verbal route. I'm still learning, so I'll fill in more about it later.

Before Aiden was born we discussed using baby signs with him for easier communication as a toddler. We saw our niece using these signs at 1 years old and were amazed at all the signs she knew and decided we would use it too. Little did we know that our child would be born with profound hearing loss and now we actually question the use of teacing him even basic signs. We question this because we are praying our child will be able to hear using cochlear implants and combined with the hard work of auditory-verbal therapy, he will be able to speak and listen. This therapy does not include any type of signing. In fact, it's suggested not to teach signing, so the sole focus is learning to communicate through listening and speaking, not signing (the implants don't just turn on a "hearing switch", it is very hard work to teach a deaf/hoh child with an implant to hear and speak and takes a lot of time and dedication, it's very different than teaching a hearing baby to speak, but the outcome is tremendous!).

Again, we are choosing for Aiden to get cochlear implants so he has the chance to speak and hear, that is our choice as his parents; we want our son to be a part of the hearing world ... but Aiden will always be deaf, there is no changing that and we have to ask ourselves how will we communicate with him when his "ears are off" or not working or if he chooses one day not to use them? We don't want to completely take away this "culture", this "community" even though we choose to (hopefully) have him implanted. As he gets older, we want to teach him all about the deaf community and the options he has and respect the decisions he makes, whether it's to communicate through hearing/speaking or through sign or both. At least we are lucky enough to give him the choice in how he communicates.

So for now, we will continue to work hard at our auditory-verbal therapy and pray that Aiden will one day speak and hear. But we will also continue to learn about this new world that has become part of our journey.