Many parents of young children are faced with a difficult decision: whether to introduce their child to the hearing world or keep them in the deaf community.  The deaf community is a culture all to itself and they pride themselves in being deaf and most particularly don’t care for the hearing world or those who may straddle both worlds – individuals who have a clear voice yet cannot hear as well as a hearing person.

There are many schools set up specifically for deaf children and some do not even allow them to wear hearing aids but rather have them immersed themselves in the ASL – American Sign Language as a way of communicating with one another and their teachers.

Just as parents come down on both sides of the communication fence – should their children use their voice or only ASL, so too do doctors and audiologists.  However, an audiologist is a trained professional who work with hearing aids that are specifically designed to aid the hearing impaired in hearing better.

There is no right or wrong answer to the debate of allowing a hearing impaired or deaf child to use their voice or to only use sign language.  This is a debate that is best left to the family and then perhaps when the child is old enough to realize they have a choice between two worlds – one that uses voices and one that uses sign language, conceivably they could make the choice for themselves.

For those children and young adults who lose their hearing after they have had a few years of hearing and may still retain some hearing, then a hearing aid would be the best fit because they already have a voice in place and could continue in the hearing world with little adjustment.

Another option for the hearing impaired that still has some hearing would be a cochlear implant.  Good candidates for cochlear implant have some of their hearing intact and would benefit from the implant that helps sounds funneled directly into the ear from a device surgically implanted outside the scalp.