Picture

Double hearing.. Quietly..

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Glem det! - En film om å være hørselshemmet i videregående skole

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It will be a while before Lotte will be there, but 6 years passes by quickly..
Even so, It's also relevant at school right now.!
so.. posting this for her, her teachers, her friends and for those that are interested..

btw..
Audiogram with simulation of loss of different frequencies 08:05

CI from 13:30
FM equipment from 14:40
Teacher explains.. 22:40

Greetings

Happy Holidays

  

Lotte.. Signing & speaking.. 2005. 12 months hearing.

Cleaning up my harddisks I found this one.

It's a long one, and she uses Norewegian signs.. (Some of them similar with ASL)

So.. Here it is...

04:12 "Er is geen speld tussen te krijgen." - "Zeg eens "Monoloog"

Touching Sound

Found this picture again

Love it how this little girl touches sound..

How is she really doing?

The question of every parent of course.. but perhaps even more for the parent of a child that was born deaf, started hearing later in life and is now catching up..
Actually.... is Lotte really catching up..??

Homework always seems, or feels, a sort of reference for what Lotte should be able to do. There's a feeling that when a she has a problem with her homework it means that she's behind.
However.. we need to step back, think back to the last meeting we had with the school and remember that she's at above average level.
She's doing fine compared to the rest of the class.. perhaps she would be at a higher level had she not been born deaf, but that is totally irrelevant. She is exactly where she should be.. She doesn't need to be able to know everything..

With this school year there's a change in education. Like Lotte's mother said:

It's no longer "Learning to read.".. it's "Reading to learn."   !!

And that is a difficult transition. We are aware that she reads words, sentences, but she's not thinking about what she reads.. At school they work on that, learning to read & understand the title, look & understand the pictures, think about it, start reading, make metal maps etc.. But its a lot to process...

Many unknown concepts..
Like "They thought the earth was the center of the orbit of the sun."
Who is "they"..? - What is "center"? - What is "orbit"? One sentence read without problems, but not understood...

BUT... is she supposed to understand.? How many other children have problems with the same concepts?
That's something we need to keep in our mind..... we only see Lotte.... we should look at the level of other children as well.. The problems she has might be a general problem at that age in that class...

It's important for us to realise this as the last thing we want to do is push Lotte too much and making her feel as if she is failing, and thereby losing her interest in school and homework.
Because.. we are lucky with that.
Lotte loves to go to school, likes doing homework, likes reading...
A little bit of frustration at times of course but also the joy of overcoming difficulties and succeeding in difficult tasks.. You cannot have the one without the other..

So.. again we will prepare homework in the weekend, structure better when we are going to do what homework. Have the homework done before she starts visiting friends..
All promises we made before, but that dilute in the daily life where parents are sometimes not home when she is done with school.
Parents that let her play with friends instead of insisting that she comes home first, that have to choose between social activities in the street vs academic activities..
Parents that look back in history to see where Lotte comes from and are looking into the future where Lotte is headed.. Trying not to look where she is NOW.
Parents that know that it will be all right in the long run..
Parents that realise that ...

Lotte is exactly where she should be..

"Tir n'a Noir"

Always beautiful... Always a joy to listen to.. and see..

Bubbles.. The sequel..

And of course Lotte wants it om the blog....

Recipe from the far east..

Take a "hei, jeg heter Lotte. jeg er 10 år" or "hi. name is Lotte and I am 10 years old"

Put it in the "google translate" pot

Stir, select the Chinese spoon and taste....

大家好，我的名字是樂天我10年

Dàjiā hǎo, wǒ de míngzì shì lètiān wǒ 10 nián

And the you can try yourself..

Then you take the Japanese spoon and taste..

こんにちは、私の名前はロッテです。私は10歳です
Kon'nichiwa, watashinonamaeha Rottedesu.Watashi wa 10-saidesu

And even listen to it... long live the iPad....

Writing.. by Lotte

It doesn't feel such a long time ago that we had to explain Lotte about writing full sentences, let alone full stories. It was hard work to have her to correct her homework in order to write down real answers instead of just repeating random words that were in the question..
(Actually, come to think of it, I recently taught her that she has to answer using the words in the question before she starts looking for the answer.... OK.. this is could become a problem..)

Anyway... Here's a story she had to write for her Norwegian homework.
OK.. it's in Norwegian, so most of you won't be able to read it.. except the names of Justin Beber and Selena Gomes.. but that doesn't matter.
She was with two other friends at home doing their math and Norwegian homework, and had great fun. Each of them wrote their "essay" and when everyone was finished they all had turns reading it before the others; taking great pride in the work they created.

The story that Lotte wrote is just one of those milestones, or wake-up calls, for us to see how well Lotte is doing in school and socially. Catching up unnoticeable as the days tick by.
A wakeup call because in a way.. "life goes on".. and looking out for new developments and milestones is not a daily activity for us. We sometimes need to be stopped in our daily tracks in order to see what has happened.

This blog is another way to reflect upon where Lotte is coming from. It is a way not to focus on what Lotte cannot do (which isn't much) but to see where she is coming from, how all the work that has been put into her, by us, by her, by the school has paid off..

btw..
Lotte has been going back and forth this weekend to a friend rehearsing for a play that they have put together..
Can't wait to see it...