You know how you buy a new car that you thought was so unique and then suddenly you see that same care EVERYWHERE? I guess having our lives changed by E's hearing loss is working kind of the same way. We have suddenly noticed hearing aids, cochlear implants, and signing everywhere. This of course is a good thing! Did you ever notice that there are random ASL signs thrown in on the show "Blue's Clues"? I don't know why they pepper them in the way they do and they are few and far between, but they are definitely there. I happened to catch an advertisement yesterday for a new drama on ABC Family. The show is called, "Switched at Birth" and features a story about two teenagers that were switched as babies and their parents find out when they are teens. The interesting thing is that one of the teens is deaf. I will be setting the DVR to catch this one because I am VERY curious to see how the show approaches this. With the popularity of Marlee Matlin and shows such as "Switched at Birth", I am hopeful that we will begin to see many more deaf or hard of hearing actors and actresses. I don't know why I didn't already know this, but I just recently learned that the HULK, Lou Ferrigno is hard of hearing. Maybe this is common knowledge and I've just been under a rock?
E has added a new sign to his list. He has understood "play" for a while, but just recently started signing it himself. There are a few others that he tries to do, but does not yet have the finger dexterity to accomplish. If you show him the "I love you" sign, he will stare at your hand, stare at his own little hand, then flash a smile and hold his hand out toward you as if he is certain he is telling you the same thing. E has definitely locked in on the idea that we talk with our hands. He studies his hands constantly and will stop everything to watch intently if you are trying to sign to him. I love watching the wheels turn as he figures out each new sign and the way he claps for himself when he has mastered a new task :-)
When my "nephews" were young they often used the A handshape or L handshape in place of the ILY handshape or Y handshape. The reason for this is because the muscles on the outer part of the hand develop last.
ReplyDeleteWe got used to their sign babble and jargon and ways of signing things and in time it developed on it's own. I remember when the middle one ("T", who is now 2) discovered that side of his hand he spent a lot of time playing with his pinky and making signs like "I love you", "airplane" and his brother's sign name. He got it by 2. His older brother ("J") got it around 3. It depends on their fine motor skills.
Their receptive skills can be amazing, even from a young age. I remember by around 8 months they both had several expressive signs and receptively understood a lot. ie: where's the ball? Do you want milk? etc. T would actually stop crying when you asked him if he wanted something, because he realized that he was going to get it. Pretty incredible.
Both boys had two word sentences at 12 months, J is currently about 1-2 years ahead in his language development and is beginning to read some printed words. He also fingerspells - a lot. We used to spell things around him that we didn't want him to know we were talking about but I think we've doomed ourselves and won't be able to do that anymore. We may have to start fingerspelling in pig Latin.
I know their parents did consider cochlear implants, but mom had a hard time going through with it so they decided to wait and focus on language/cognitive skills. J did have loaner hearing aids for a while, but they did not end up buying his own. He did like using them though. J uses his voice a lot - especially while playing with trains. He'll fingerspell and voice "whoo whoo!" We'll see how much speech he develops, and it's possible he will get a cochlear implant in the future, but then again he may not. Either way, I think his language, cognitive, and literacy skills will be on target.
Before even getting speech services or in home services we did show him his voice using the alerting system that flashes lights when there is noise (used to alert his parents if the baby is crying) and letting him feel his vocal chords vibrate. You probably can use a balloon as well - the balloon will vibrate. We were able to teach him "inside voice" and "outside voice" around 20 months because of that. Of course, now he'll yell loudly outside and if we ask him to be quiet he'll tell us "we're outside... screaming is fine" heh.