Psychological Clearance

We have been cleared as far as the psychological eval goes!  Chris and I (and Samantha and Peter) met with a Kaiser psychologist to make sure we knew what we were getting into with the CI, and all the work it would take on our parts.

I think we blew those concerns out of the water. I did most of the talking, but Chris was good moral support.  We talked about how we were looking at a school that would train us to create a language learning environment. We talked about how it would be great to mainstream by preschool, but that kindergarten was also a reasonable goal.  I talked about daily maintenance.  We talked about the pros of giving Peter access to as much as possible, and the most opportunities to succeed that we could.

The Dr. asked about what would happen if it didn't work out as well as we hoped. Chris and I are on the same page about crossing that bridge only if we have to, but that whatever situation we find ourselves in we will do whatever we can to give our kids the best chances. I have met several people with CI's now, and I told her that the only person whom I had met that wasn't as much of a fan was the little deaf girl from China who had had NO language (no signing, no writing, no reading, no nothin') until she was adopted here.  I almost started crying when I brought up the deaf Chinese kids just sitting in the orphanages!  (I am not sad that they are deaf, or in orphanages, but that they are left without language for so long. Communicating is so important- whether it be by sign, written word or speech, and to deny these kids that...but I can't adopt them all. I can't adopt any of them with my hands as full as they are at this point)

The one question I didn't expect was "Did you ever consider just raising Peter in the deaf world?" I hadn't ever really thought about that one, but I brought up my Chinese adoption analogy- just because you get a baby from China doesn't mean your whole family starts speaking Chinese. Some families do their best to honor the child's cultural heritage, but the child also learns Spoken/written English, and they may or may not get Chinese lessons. Our family is oral, as is every person in our extended family. So we will do our best to give Peter ASL and access to the deaf community, but we want to do what we can to help him communicate with as many people as possible, which means listening and speaking, too.

"What if he decides not to wear the CI when he is older?"  Well, I guess that is a possibility, and if he is an adult, it s his prerogative.  We would certainly all learn as much sign as we could, but I can't imagine the extended family becoming fluent in ASL (other than my sister-in-law, who already is). But again, that bridge doesn't need to be crossed.  Hopefully CI's give Peter useful, and even beautiful, sound that he will be happy to have, and when he wants it really quiet, he can just take them off for a while.

And that was that. The Dr. said that as far as she was concerned we were ready, but that it wasn't her decision, and that her report just got forwarded to the CI Audiologist, and then the decision was by the ENT team. OK.  So I had a mad scramble to get to these last two appointments, and now I get to wait :/ I hope it isn't too long of a wait!