Kandarian

Many people feel the choice of getting the implant should be saved until the child is older and able to make the choice him/her self.

This is very sad. It puts your child at a huge disadvantage to only start hearing when they're in their teens or twenties. Their quality of speech would suffer I'd think.

Also, you've deprived your child of a sense because of the totally random quirk that human culture revolves around language. You don't see Blind communities for that exact reason. Blind people don't need to develop their own language to communicate with the world, so there really aren't any insular Blind communities or cultures. I had very poor vision as a child and was very grateful that my parents took me to the optometrist instead of waiting until I was old enough to make my own decision about whether or not I wanted to see properly.

To deprive a child of medically proven treatment for any other disability would be seen as abuse, but because culture revolves around language and deaf people have developed their own language, it's somehow okay in their minds for them to deprive their own children of help so that they might stay in the culture.

tl;dr - I got a bit ranty. Language develops culture and makes it seem cool for deaf folks to not get cochlear implants and improve the quality of life for their children. Thanks for doing this AMA. It's very interesting!

I hadn't heard of Shardik before today, but I love reading authors' favourite books! We nearly named our daughter Hazel after reading Watership Down.

She looks kind of pissed that he interrupted her song.

How did you know you didn't have schizophrenia? What did you have if not BPD or schizophrenia?

It was a name I pitched to my husband about 3 days before she was born. He'd never read the book and we'd already picked out another name.