Deaf until I was 2 years old.

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I recently found out that I was severely deaf until I was 2 years old, when I had the operation.

It is in my autism assessment that I was moderately delayed in speech, but rapidly developed in reading (I learnt how to read at just under 3 years of age).

Is it possible that I was either:
a) delayed in speech due to being deaf, and not autism
b) actually not deaf but just not reacting to my environment (a sort of autistic "completely detached from the world and in own world" sort of thing)

?

I was also deaf until I was a year and a half and that was the reason for my speech delay and my mom told me autistic kids and deaf children have similar behaviors. I think this is one of the reasons why I was so hard to diagnose and it took an autism expert but my speech therapist thought I could have it and so did my psychologist who ironically knew nothing about it. But yet I was never advanced but I did read above my grade level in 5th grade and had above level spelling and punctuation and I was the only girl in 4th grade who knew all the times tables because I was the only one in class who got a 100%. But I never learned to do anything early like math or reading and I was never an expert on my interests so I wasn't a knowledge person.

it is possible it could have been both and it is possible how you are now could be from when you were deaf since deaf peoples brains are also wired differently and that happens to hearies too who were once deaf as a toddler because their brains develop so fast so it does affect their development while they are deaf.

I would think a, I'd think you'd of been severely affected by loud noises should you have been exposed to them, especially if autistic.

What operation? Cochlear implant?

That is possible.

It's also possible you had speech delays due to both autism and being deaf, in combination (i.e. your speech delays might have been still there but different or less severe if you had only one of the issues instead of both).



That seems unlikely because there are ways to test hearing that don't rely on behavioral response to sound, such as Auditory Brainstem Response which can be done while someone is asleep or under anesthesia...and I'm guessing that doctors would want to be absolutely sure that someone was deaf before performing any kind of surgery to make them hear.

Thanks.

Did they confirm what it was that was causing your deafness, or did they make a mistake by operating when you were not really deaf afterall (your parents should tell you)?