Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Deaf as a post…doornail…tree stump…pick your inanimate object 11/27/2007

Well, it’s official.  Sophie is profoundly deaf in both ears.  The high-tech test they conducted can test up to about 100-110 decibels (that’s really loud!) and they got no response at that level in either ear.

This time we will not hem and haw.  With a CI (or two), Sophie will have amazing modern technology that will allow her access to the full range of speech sounds.  And while she is a couple of years older than most children who are implanted these days (they are now implanting most children between the ages of 6 and 12 months), she is still young enough to develop close to normal speech (or even normal speech) if provided with the appropriate learning opportunities.  Don’t get me wrong, we are signing furiously with Sophie right now.  And we hope she will acquire as many signs as possible in the next 6-8 months or so (for starters), but at the same time, we can begin exposing and familiarizing her to the world of sound so that when she is ready to speak words, she will have a base of vocabulary to begin with.  Whether or not we continue to sign with her or transition to a more oral focus is going to be largely up to Sophie.  With Adelina, we took our cues from her, and it is our plan with Sophie to do the same thing.  We will provide her all the opportunities to learn sign and develop speech, and see what she does with those resources.  Truth be told, learning to talk is much harder work than learning to sign, but the payoff in life is massive.  Being able to live and work independently in the hearing world is a huge asset, and one that we hope both our girls will gain before it’s all through.

So that’s the big news for the day.