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Friday, February 1

Language Arts Skills - Kindergarten

It's hard to believe, but Drew is half way through Kindergarten! He's enjoyed making new friends this year, but mostly I think he enjoys being at the same school as his sister.

Drew's progress this year has been amazing. Besides a slight issue of talking too much during circle time and missing vital instructions ("Drew can get silly/talkative during group and work time..."), he has matured quite a bit this year and had glowing remarks on his progress report.

The most amazing piece of his report is his development of Language Arts skills. His teacher wrote, "Drew is growing so much as a reader and writer! He always amazes me that he is strong in language arts with his degree of hearing loss." Drew is currently working above grade level in most Language Arts skills, including rhyming, sight words, letter identification, and so on.

I'm really wishing I could have back all of the hours I spent worrying about weather or not he would ever learn to read and write.


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say thank you for this blog. Someone just told me about it yesterday, and I have so very much enjoyed reading about Drew's journey and relating to so many things you have written about. My son was born with bilateral profound hearing loss and had his first implant done at 12 months old in November - his next one is 2 weeks away! We also live in Columbus and I just find Drew's story to be so uplifting and encouraging!

Mer said...

I've been reading old posts on your blog for the past couple months.. ever since my daughter was diagnosed with severe hearing loss. Thank you so much for sharing your story. In my darkest days following Keira's diagnosis I felt a glimmer of hope after watching Drew's videos and reading your posts. We learned last week that her hearing loss was caused by Connexin 26 mutation and though I was sad about what that might mean for our possible future family I was also relieved because of information I found on your blog about how kids with Connexin tend to do with CIs and therapy. Thank you again.

Unknown said...

Hi,

My name is John and I have a quick question about your blog! Could you please email me?

Thank you,

John

Unknown said...

Dear Drew's Mom,

Since I could not find a way to e-mail you directly, I hope that you will read this comment eventually. Although we are thousands of miles away (me being from south-east Europe), Drew's story and your blog have brought about some drastic changes in the life of my family and I couldn't thank you enough for it. My daughter, Mina, was also diagnosed with profound hearing loss, and at the age of 17 months has been implanted unilaterally with Nucleus 5 system (in our country, we still do not have bilateral implantations, which is a shame). There has been 2 years since the activation and she still has little progress. Her reaction to sound is excellent, so is her understanding and receptive language, but she only has 5-7 words which she uses and not all of them are pronounced properly. I felt even long ago that there is something wrong with the therapy and feared that the fact that we almost did nothing at home brought about this result. However, and you would not beleive this, we were advised so by the therapist. She had therapy 5 days a week, for about half an hour, with no parent participation. During the therapy she would have to sit across the table from the therapist and repeat several ling sounds,animal sounds etc. over and over again. With no engagement in the meaningful activity. She only had 4 mappings during this two years, all of which lasted for about 10 minutes, and has only been to the sound booth once doing pure tone testing for about 5 minutes. Audiograph showed that she can hear at 30dB at all frequencies. They considered that to be enough and that there is no need for further mapping or booth testing. Last month several important things had happened. We met and started working with SLT therapist, who has years of experience working in Australia (but her native language is Serbian, like ours, which is great). Mina got the skin infection at the place of magnet, since the magnet was too strong and irritated her skin, so we had to visit the surgeon who implanted her for a proper therapy. He recommended a CT scan to check if everything is ok inside (and it is ok), but also a second CI clinic with additionally educated CI team of audiologists and therapists. We had the initial meeting with them, as well as the assessment meetings with SLT and psychologist, and audiologist. In two days we will have a new mapping and booth testing and they also recommended mapping to be done once a month in the following period in order to fix the map and compensate for having too little mappings.
Several nights ago, I came across your blog and couldn't stop reading all night. It was an epiphany. I realized - this is how the therapy and proper mapping and follow up should look like. But at the same time I couldn't stop crying thinkg what have I done to my child? How much I have hindered her language development by following the therapist's lead and not trying to explore more. It is my fault, ours as parents, that we trusted the wrong people, but it's to Mina's disadvantage. Your blog has opened a whole new world for us, and we made some important changes. We also made a decision to advocate for our child and not to settle with anything less in quality of service that what Drew or any other child like him has.
All the best, and thank you immensely

Anonymous said...

Hi Katie i was trying to email you but it permanently failed. Your story engages me because I am experiencing the similar condition as you. I am 19 and my hearing decrease every year and now it is in profound state. I would appreciate it a lot if you could share how you get through it as I am having a very though time in dealing with my hearing loss. Thank you anyway!

Anonymous said...

Your son is so inspirational. I have a 6 month old son who is profound deaf due to a cmv infection. We are in process for cochlear implants. I'm alittle afraid of the operation and i'm super nervous. Do you have advice for me. You have so much experience for what I can see.

Drew's Dad said...

Hi everyone,

We are sorry to not have responded sooner. Thank you for the kind words, they mean so much! If anyone has a question at this point let us know and we will try to respond.

swati pankaj gawande said...

thanks for info
nice blog