Posted on May 4, 2017
The Limping Chicken
When we implanted our profoundly deaf two-year-old son Micah with cochlear implants, we gave little thought to American Sign Language or Deaf Culture.
We were a hearing family, following the council of our audiologists, and under enormous pressure, we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time.
Micah received the $50,000 bilateral implant surgery and the $18,000 implants. He participated in expensive speech, auditory and oral therapies, but despite our time, efforts, and financial investment, he hated hearing.
Sound was like an itchy sweater he refused to wear. He fought us tooth and nail, literally biting and kicking until he and I were both in tears. As you can guess, he made few speech gains.
Believing the implants would help him develop language, we had put all of our eggs in one basket, and by age five, Micah had a significant language delay.
As you can imagine, his inability to communicate resulted in frustration and major behavior problems. Outings to the grocery store or park ended in violent tantrums, so much so, that I felt like I couldn
