Why are some parents against cochlear implants for their children?

If my child were born deaf, I would consider having the CI surgery and activating the unit at a fairly early age.  However, I would *NOT* depend on the CI for my child's first language acquisition.  Instead, I would make sure that my deaf child got as much exposure to a natural sign language (e.g. ASL, not "Total Communication" or "SimCom") as early as possible.  Having given my child a solid foundation in ASL as a first language, I would then consider a range of options for helping my child learn English as a second language, in spoken, written, and heard forms.  These could include a bilingual home environment, strategic educational placement, and speech therapy/habilitation, among others.

The most controversial -and in my opinion damaging- aspect of cochlear implant surgery is not having the implant itself, but rather the practice of instructing parents to keep children with CIs away from sign language. This is *not* an evidence-based practice, and therefore I believe that the core issue here is about data, not about ethics. Concerns about implants destroying Deaf culture generally assume that the implants work much better than they do.  Although I do not have any statistics to verify this claim, my anecdotal experience is that it is far more common for a pediatric CI recipient to stop using the CI in adolescence/early adulthood, learn sign language, and become a part of the Deaf community.

Read other answers by

Matt Hall on Quora:

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Read more answers on Quora.

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