listen with your heart. speak with love.
Our Family's Cochlear Implant Journey
Saturday, June 15, 2013
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on. He was a baby with hearing aids and then a toddler with a Cochlear
Implant. Strangers would stare. Sometimes sweet old ladies at the
grocery store would pat my shoulder and tell me how sweet he was and
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Kindergarten in a school where he is the ONLY kiddo out of over 500
that has Cochlear Implants.
I spent this year at our mainstream school excitedly explaining to
parents, teachers, administrators, and coaches "Yes, he's deaf BUT...."
My bilateral Cochlear Implant boy is able to do things academically and
ocially that every other 6.5 year old boy can. He became a class
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really working hard on rehabilitating his year old left Cochlear
Implant. Teaching a deaf kid (even one like Christian) to read and tell
the difference between a /th/ sound and /f/ sound is a challenge and
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And then there is our life as a family impacted by hearing loss. 5
years ago today Christian received his first Cochlear Implant. Over the
past 5 years, we've had months that have flown by with progress and
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It's not the end of the road for us though. Weekly therapy appointments
for his newly implanted ear, constant monitoring of his mainstream
classroom experience still dominate our family life. But it's gotten
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is reading at the expected 1st Grade level.
This is my little boy, who happens to have bilateral cochlear implants,
who is in a class with 22 other kids in a TYPICAL public school
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with hearing loss in his grade and the only child with Cochlear
Implants in a school with close to 500 kids.
This is my little boy, who also was in school since he was 18 months
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"me" in that picture was still innocent. Hearing loss, deafness, IEPs,
urgeries, Cochlear Implants, private schools, speech perception
testing and inclusion meant nothing to me. That "me" in the picture had
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over our head. I found out we were pregnant with her on the day of
Christian's first Cochlear Implant activation. He was just under 16
months old, and we were in the thick of it. I was constantly
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Learning to Listen
Just after Christian's first Cochlear Implant activation (almost 5
years ago...wow....) my life was consumed by teaching him to "LEARN TO
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As he grew, it just clicked. Honestly, at almost 5 years post his first
activation and one year after his second implant the days of me
teaching him a sound and what the meaning was are almost gone. And then
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(6), and Liliana Grace (4) Christian was born Deaf, and was
implanted with his Cochlear Implant at 14 months of age and his
econd at 5 years old. Lily is hearing, and is a handful but a