Life is Bliss - Lily's Cochlear Implant Journey

The Auditory Brain - Carol Flexer - Speech transcript - So Good!

We are huge fans of Carol Flexer an Audiologist, professor, book author and presenter on The Auditory Brain: Conversations for Pediatric Audiologists.  This link is to a transcript of a presentation and Q&A Dr Flexer made on AudiologyOnline last spring.  So, so, so good!  Mandatory reading.  

Learning To Read

Lily has always loved books and reading. Here's a quick video of her taking a stab at reading herself. She's getting a good start for a 3-year-old. When Lily was first diagnosed I would have thought this impossible. Don't doubt the power of great early intervention, spectacular AB technology, tons of hard work, and a lot of love along the way.

 

Lily The Giant

Here's a quick video of Lily reciting the giant's rant from Jack and the Beanstalk. Love the acting. Also love the language that comes from listening to stories. Can't believe she remembers the most gruesome parts to recite.

 

Playing in the Leaves and READING

Playing in the leaves was a perfect way to spend a beautiful fall day.  

Lily knew that leaves rustle and crackle.   And of course they "fall from the trees because winter is coming."   Leaves and trees have been a theme at Nature preschool which she continues to enjoy.  

Speaking of Crackle - Lily is starting to read.  The Rice Crispy Box was in front of her and she sounded out "POP!"  "And there is an exclamation point," she said.  We also put the bowl of cereal up to her microphone and she said she could hear it cracking.  Now that is a very quiet sound.  

Last week she also read her first sentence in a library book that she had never seen before.  It said "I Love Dogs."  What an exciting moment.   Who would have ever imagined that she would start to read at 3.4 years old.    

 

Weekend Experiences & Learning Opportunities

One of the things we try to do constantly is to expose Lily to as many different experiences and learning opportunities (combined with fun). We think it's been vital to her vocabulary growth, social development, and overall good character building ;-) 

This weekend Lily had an opportunity to meet the Cat in the Hat at a local bookstore. We spent the evening at the Twilight on the Tallgrass fundraising event for the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center. Lily identified birds, pressed flowers, pet a horse, and of course rolled down the hill of prairie grass. Good times.

 

 

  

Carol Flexer - It's All About the Brain (Part 2)

Here's part two of my mini-notes.

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• Sound field device is a strong teaching tool.
• FMs need to be programmed to the individual child by the audiologist with sound room testing and listening in the classroom. All that is at stake is their brain.
• +6dB is what adults require to hear in noise. Twice as loud as background sounds. 
• 10 times louder is required by all children +15-20dB
• Most classrooms have inconsistent SNR. Proximity to speaker does not work alone.
• Six year olds can't navigate like a 50 year old.

Carol Flexer - It's All About the Brain (Part 1)

Had the opportunity this weekend to spend some time with Carol Flexer at the Aurora Leadership Center where she came to speak to parents and professionals about hearing loss. We've promoted her book Children With Hearing Loss: Developing Listening and Talking Birth to Six in our Amazon list since we started this blog and it was nice to finally meet her and get some first hand teachings and insights. 

 

She spent two days presenting on a variety of topics - all relevant, engaging, and spot on to our hearing journey and others. Can't recommend enough to see her speak if you get the chance (She'll be speaking the AG Bell Conference we mentioned last post). 

Anyway, here's a series of mini notes I took during the sessions.

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Fun With A Flashlight

Last night we were reading Goodnight Gorilla, one of Lily's favorite books (special thanks to Uncle Chris for picking this one out). The story is about a mischievous monkey who escapes and unlocks the cages of all the other animals in the zoo as they follow the zookeeper home for a good night's sleep. The zookeeper has a flashlight and Lily likes to follow along in the book while she points her own flashlight. After a couple of readings Lily began pointing the flashlight all over the room stopping at each item and naming them - "Lamp... door... another door... fan... dresser." What a fun vocabulary game. 

Are You Fancy? No, I'm Just Lily.

Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor is a big hit in our house this week.  Faye, Lily's hearing resource teacher, brought us the book.  She reasoned that if Lily loved fairy wings, she'd love Fancy Nancy.  She was right. 

Fancy Nancy loves to make everything fancy including her family members and she loves to eat parfaits.  Both are things Lily loves too.     

If we ask Lily if she is fancy, she says "No, I'm just Lily Bliss." 

Lily Goes to School

Lily spends a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  While she's there, she attends "Papas" school.  They read lots of books, talk about colors, numbers, shapes and letters.  Lily has mastered most of the colors, the basic shapes, one through ten although two and seven are often missing, and many letters in the alphabet including A, B, L and I.   Many of the lessons are on the computer.  Her reward for good work of course includes M&Ms.  Yes she knows the letter M as well.  Thanks for your help!

Library Story Time - Color Quiz

Last week at library story time, Miss Sue was quizzing the kids about colors.  She had put pictures of babies on the wall, each wrapped in a colorful blanket.    We always sit close to the front to make sure Lily can hear everything.  When Miss Sue asked, "What color is this blanket," Lily responded loudly, "Red."  Ohhhh the elusive red.  She knew red!  This was the color that Lily has been forgetting.  Then Miss Sue asked again.  "How about this one?"  "Blue."  "This one."  "Green."  "This one." "Blue - No Purple." "And this one?" "Yellow." "Nice job Lily!"  Then I heard someone behind me say, "How old is she?" Someone else said, "Three."  Nope. 

Carl's Birthday - Reading Without Words

Last week Faye brought Lily a couple of books to read during the week. Her favorite is Carl's Birthday about a big dog and the baby Madeline who go on an adventure. It's actually a series of books. They are marvelously illustrated, but except for the first page or so, no words appear on the pages. One of the things we learned early on in our journey was to read, read, read to Lily, but not to always be restricted to the words on the page. The Carl books are excellent at helping us do this. Lily loves looking at the pictures as we make up the dialog and explanations on each page. It's been an excellent way to try new language, expand vocabulary, and ask questions. 

Tonight we went to the mall and Lily kept telling us she wanted to go to the "bookstore" (she likes playing with the train set they have in the children's book area). We left with Good Dog, Carl to add to the collection.

  

She Talks A Lot

We sat down with a Mom and four year old boy at the library last week to do a color page.  Because we try and read 10 books a day, we are at the library frequently. 

Lily started chatting immediately, talking about the colors, shapes, what she was drawing, the boy and his mom, on and on.  The mother said, "She talks a lot."  I smiled and said "Yeah."  Then she she said, "How old is she?" and went on to say how advanced she thought Lily was and that her language was so clear and easy to understand. 

I don't think this Mom could see or knew what Lily's CIs were.  With only the tan Advanced Bionics headpieces and nothing on the ears (BWP setup), the CIs are starting to disappear in her blond hair.   

These are the little moments that keep me going. :)

Story Time at the Bookstore

Lily and I tried story time this week at a local bookstore.  It is a huge store with high ceilings and lots of noise.  I wasn't sure how much of the Thanksgiving books Lily would hear, but sat close to the lady reading the books anyway.  There was a plate of cookies on the table closest to us, which caught LIly's eye and may of been her incentive to sit and listen to the books.  She was also watching a baby on the other side of the room and kept telling me "Bae-Ba".   As Lily listened to the books, the lady read, "...and the people shouted Hurray."  Instantly, Lily threw her arms in the air.  Did she really hear that?  Then the lady said, "...and they all clapped their hands..." and Lily immediately clapped her hands in response.  Then I started cheering and clapping my hands really loud (in my head), and sat amazed at what she is picking up. 

Matching Goats

Llly has started connecting items in our "10 books a day" with real items such as dogs (points to Tango), hairdryer (points upstairs) and goats (points to her barn and actually went and got the little plastic goat with a hat).   It is really exciting to see her categorizing these items and connecting them back in her memory.  She is also matching objects to objects, such as a ceramic horse with her furry pink riding horse.  I am not sure how this connects to language, except that we label everything and use animal sounds.  My goat sound is getting better and better.  Matching seems to be an early math skill which I am sure translates somehow into language.  We hope. 

Speech Sounds - The Basics

Cochlear has a great resource that provides a rich overview of all the speech sounds, along with activities and examples that can be used everyday. Well worth checking out - Speech Sounds for Parents and Professionals.

Reading Books Everyday

We've been reading to Lily from very early on.  Carol Flexer an author on working with kids with hearing impairments and an AVT recommends 10 books a day.  We were up to that level, until Lily was around 10 months old and she learned that running around was much more fun than sitting on laps and reading.  Even Grandpa couldn't get her to sit still. 

That all changed last week.  Suddenly Lily was picking up the books on her own.  We have books in every room, and keep a rotating supply of library books on hand.  I will now find Lily flipping through a book and when I sit with her to read, she will actually stay still for a little while.  We're back to at least five books a day.

We've heard a number of great sessions on reading to kids in the past year. Some of the things we learned include:

- Start by getting kids comfortable with books, flipping pages right to left, looking at the pictures, and referencing the text. 

- Then "read the book" by using words she may receptively know like bear, baby, sit down, touch, hands, toes, etc. 

- And then of course expand the vocabulary to other common words. 

- We now ask questions like, "Where is the doggie?"  Today she actually pointed to the dog and then got a big smile on her face.  So cool.

The other reading highlight today was when she was looking at this cute little book called I Love You Through and Through (see book link on the left).  One of the pages has a happy little boy with his hands waving in the air.   He has just thrown his teddy bear and it is upside down on the page.  I watched as Lily studied this little boy, then turned the book over to see the bear right side up, then flipped the book back over to keep reading.  Amazing.