Noah's CI has been activated for just over a year now, so his AVT therapist has been doing all sorts of assessments to see how much progress he's made. One of the assessment had a list of auditory benchmarks that kids with CIs should have after 1, 2, 3, or 4 years of AV Therapy.
Noah doesn't do some of the 1st year things - he's never been interested in imitating sounds in isolation, and as our audiologist will tell you, he's become quite good at not making any visible response when he hears sound. Fortunately his language skills make it clear that he can actually hear the Ling 6, even if he won't repeat them or drop a block in a bucket. What surprised me was the things he was doing that aren't in the first year's expectations. He has met all of the year 2 and 3 goals and about half of the ones for year 4. Apparently retelling an entire story from memory is a 4th year goal - who knew!
I really am amazed and proud at how Noah has taken off with his CI. Noah's speech is not just age appropriate for his actual age, it's advanced. And he's only been hearing since March of last year! He is picking up language incidentally as well, if not better, than his hearing peers. Wow! In light of this new information, we're starting to phase out AV Therapy. We'll be switching from weekly to every other week starting in July. There's a lot of important language development that happens in the next few years and we don't want Noah to get behind but at this point he doesn't need teaching so much as monitoring. Way to go, Noah!
If only he would learn how to eat...
1 comment:
You don't know me but I do read your blog regularly. I had a preemie, but not nearly as early as your wonderful little guy and I stumbled accross your blog in my research online. Anyway, I just want to say, that I feel chills and congratulations for Noah. He is doing so well with CI. I just find everything so interesting. Congraulations to you, him and your husband. You are raising one heck of a kid!
~Cheryl
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