Rita Simon, My daughter, deafness and me........

[LottieJenkins]

I am watching this now............Did anyone else watch it???

Yes, I watched it last night, Im involved with the Deaf Community and felt it was not shown in a particularly postive light last night. Whilst I have absolutely no issue what so ever with someone having a cohclear implant for their child I was disappointed that the importance of BSL and the DC was swept away.

Me too! My son Wilf is profoundly deaf. He has been brought up to learn Total Communication so he can communicate with all deaf people!!!!

I thought it was odd that they'd not engaged earlier with the Deaf community. My DD2 has a far milder hearing loss (she has no cochlear nerve on one side (although has normal hearing on the other when she doesn't have glue ear)) and we deal with our local Hearing Impaired Service and go to HI signing and music groups so DD already knows several profoundly deaf children and we know several families going through the CI process.

I do not understand why they aren't teaching sign language. Surely this would be beneficial - even with a cochlear it takes a long time to learn language and sometimes a quick way of telling a deaf child is vital and hearing aids don't work everywhere. For example.... If you want to warn child of imminent danger you don't want to wait while they process the sound and work out that this is a different contact to the previous conversations. Also if swimming the child will lose all ability to communicate.
By teaching the child sign language and by allowing them to understand deaf culture and mix with a variety of people can only enhance their life. They is no reason why she can't learn sign now and still have cochlear in future.
There is always the risk the cochlear will not work, go wrong or that the child may hate the way it feels. You are then left with a child with no hearing and no way to communicate.

Contact means context

I spent sometime helping in a school that had a unit for hearing impaired children.
I was told their parents had chosen for them to be taught aurally using radio aids rather at a school that used sign language.

While this might be good for interacting with the hearing world I'm not sure it was always in the children's best interests.

Most of the time they did lessons along side their hearing class mates and they certainly had real problems in swimming lessons.

However even with their radio aids I'm not sure they always followed things as well as they liked to pretend.

I can't help wondering if learning some sign language even if only their TA could do it back would have given them a fall back when they were loosing the thread.

Also my hearing isn't brilliant and it's really tiring having to concentrate on what's being said and very easy to drift off.

I was a bit when her daughter walked away from the sign language teacher and RS said "oh we will show her later!" That lady was there for the sole purpose of teaching that child about BSL. She should have been made to sit still and watch!

I didn't see the programme, but I think R'S has said how she has found it very hard to accept her daughters disability, which might explain why they didn't engage sooner.

sorry to come back to this again but I must admit the programme sort of upset me somewhat and I keep thinking of other things. Other posters have quite rightly pointed out that if a child is swimming etc and cannot wear their aids or implants then communication is impaired somewhat, lip reading isvery tiring, and sometimes difficult, so BSL is so important. CIs are great for some but you are still deaf. (lordy this is coming out in a right old jumble sorry .

Wips I think you have it spot on, I think that they were struggling to accept their childs disability and were looking for a magic cure for their daughter, which is incrediably sad for them all, but not uncommon. I was just so sad to see the deaf community portrayed in what I felt was a slightly negative way. A lot of Deaf people are against CI, but thats more to do with protecting their own language, which is totally normal, many deaf children are in mainstream schools with support communication workers and from what Ive witnessed do well, deaf schools are fantastic and friendships are made for life there. (here I ramble again) Subject close to my heart, deafness runs in my family, although I am hearing, it remains to be seen as to whether my DS is in the clear or not, so BSL has been used by all the family always.

I am taking a class of BSL2 students out tomorrow and they are going to spend the day as deaf, so should be interesting

I found the programme very moving. I concluded that because Mia has progressively lost her hearing, they consider her as a hearing child who's hearing has deteriorated, rather than a deaf child with some hearing. I thought they were beginningto explore the def world, until the lady accused Rita of abusing her child. She was quite upset by that. She definitely was impressed by the deaf school, and was reassured that deaf children do not miss out and playlike any non-deaf children.

Just caught up with this on iplayer and found it very interesting.
Deafness is in my family and we all sign. I have very poor hearing myself and often find myself excluded from conversations or tired from trying hard to listen and keep up, particularly when there is background noise.

I hope that Rita is able to come to terms with her daughter's deafness and find a route which suits them.

This may sound bad, but it struck me that as she is a celebrity, and they looked fairly wealthy, nice big posh house etc - she is less accepting of the non-perfect-ness of a child with a disability.

I found it quite disturbing that Rita and her husband were at such polar opposites about how best to move forward. They really didn't seem to have any common ground there. DH and I were at her not wanting to take her to BSL classes as she was too busy - but happy for her to do all the stage stuff. Was really upset at the thought of the little girl struggling at school becuase her parents were so unclear about how to help her. I came away quite upset about the whole thing - for the daughter and her twin who didn't seem to get a look in, ever!

I was at school with Rita and I think it's fair to say she was neither the most sensitive person nor the most dedicated to learning. Having had no contact with her at all since then, I found it interesting to see her in this. I think her own lack of interest in education really showed. I know a lot of people change between 16 and 35, but she really seemed very similar.

I found this interesting as a deaf person myself who is due to get a cochlear implant. I wasn't happy with Rita's behaviour, she seemed very negative about deafness, almost like it was a terminal illness. There are ways to cope with it and make things easier - CI, BSL etc - and her daughter could do well if Rita embraces all this like my parents did. I'm thankful that they enabled me to go to a mainstream school, university, get a great job etc.

she really didn't do herself any favours did she?

As a mother of an implant user who doesn't use Bsl I actually think some of the attitudes here and on the programme are naive. My dd is mainstream schooled and uses lip reading when she can not hear ( which is rarely) implants are now waterproof and she has always used hers when swimming. Technology such as radio aids and sound field systems together with her implant mean that she doesn't need Bsl in school or home. We are not anti learning Bsl ( I have passed my exams) but given over 90% of deaf children are in hearing families focusing on speech if possible is most family's preference these days. I work with implanted children and if given the right support they are able to achieve their potential despite their disability.

I am hearing impaired and so is my youngest daughter. What pissed me off about that woman was the way she treated the condition like it was the end of the world! I am totally positive with my daughter and spend a lot of time trying to convince others with children with the same condition that it is not a HUGE 'disability'. There are so many more options and we must be positive and not make our children feel horribly 'different'. My dd is supremely confident - she knows what to do if she mishears someone, she knows what to do if she is teased or questioned and I hope I have helped her feel that way. By weeping and wailing and singling children out, not allowing them access to basic help, then the parents are setting their children up to feel bad. I know, my mother did that to me.