This documentary follows a couple of families in New York who have strong ties to the deaf world. It gets a little confusing on paper for who is in the different families, but there are two main families. Both of the husbands of the families are brothers. One is hearing, the other is deaf. The deaf brother, Peter, is married to a deaf woman and they have three deaf kids. The oldest is Heather, who is five. She expresses interest in getting a cochlear implant. As a family they check out what getting one entails. The mother decides she would like to get one, but when she finds out it wouldn’t help her a whole lot, she decides not to get one. She also decides that Heather won’t get one either. This causes problems with Peter’s parents who are both hearing and think that Heather should have one. There are some heated debates and in the end, Peter moves his family from Long Island to Maryland.
Peter’s brother, Chris, is hearing and is married to a hearing woman (although she signs since her parents are deaf) and they have twin boys. One of the boys is hearing and the other is deaf. They decide to have their deaf son implanted with a cochlear implant. This causes some more contention in the family.
An update of the story six years later shows that Peter moved his family back to Long Island. Heather, one of her brothers and their mother end up getting cochlear implants. They seem to be doing really well.
This affects me a lot because my Associate’s Degree is in American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting and we studied deaf culture a lot. My wife and I have had a lot of “discussions” about this topic. She insists that if we had a deaf child, we would implant them. For a long time, I highly disagreed. She had some good points. One of them was that I have really bad knees and my kneecaps will have to be replaced someday. My knees are bad and they can and will be fixed. If our child’s hearing is bad, it can be fixed. My problem with that is that once that implant is taken off or if the batteries die, they are deaf. We have made a compromise. If we do have a deaf child, we will implant them, but we will teach them ASL as well as oral communication. If you don’t implant them very early, the chance of talking well diminishes rapidly. Once our child is old enough, they can make the decision to be a “hearing” person or to take the implant off and join the deaf community.
Peter’s brother, Chris, is hearing and is married to a hearing woman (although she signs since her parents are deaf) and they have twin boys. One of the boys is hearing and the other is deaf. They decide to have their deaf son implanted with a cochlear implant. This causes some more contention in the family.
An update of the story six years later shows that Peter moved his family back to Long Island. Heather, one of her brothers and their mother end up getting cochlear implants. They seem to be doing really well.
This affects me a lot because my Associate’s Degree is in American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting and we studied deaf culture a lot. My wife and I have had a lot of “discussions” about this topic. She insists that if we had a deaf child, we would implant them. For a long time, I highly disagreed. She had some good points. One of them was that I have really bad knees and my kneecaps will have to be replaced someday. My knees are bad and they can and will be fixed. If our child’s hearing is bad, it can be fixed. My problem with that is that once that implant is taken off or if the batteries die, they are deaf. We have made a compromise. If we do have a deaf child, we will implant them, but we will teach them ASL as well as oral communication. If you don’t implant them very early, the chance of talking well diminishes rapidly. Once our child is old enough, they can make the decision to be a “hearing” person or to take the implant off and join the deaf community.
This is such a difficult decision for parents to make - it seems like no matter what you decide children seen to take the opposite view.
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