She understands... or does she..??

Lotte is doing well. Most important, her teacher knows how to "see" Lotte. We're lucky to have her. Lots of progress. She's a little fighter..

Its difficult for outsiders to really "see" the child that has trouble hearing, because these children are masters in faking they understand the message. 

It's one of the things we have been focusing on a lot.. We tell her teachers, trainers.. "Do not think Lotte understands what you are saying. Not even when she says she does."'

We tell them to ask control questions....

Lotte does understand more and more but at the same time she's hiding some of the things she does not understand. When confronted with that, she will do a step back, smile and say "Oh yeh, I dont understand..". But not before..

It's understandable.. Lotte doesn't want to say every time she doesn't understand, and the teachers, friends, and at times us - parents - rather go on with the conversation than check if she did or did not understand.

Sometimes it doesn't harm to move on... sometimes it's important to verify that the message has gone through..

At the "Lotte-Parent-teacher" meeting the teacher told Lotte that if she doesn't understand, she needs to ask her. And if Lotte still doesn't understand, she should ask again.. It's up to her - Lotte's teacher - to make sure Lotte understands... 

Then I told Lotte that it is always OK to ask. In fact, not asking is the first mistake, and just writing down an answer without understanding the question is the second mistake..

Lotte hates making mistakes, so I hope this will be a motivating way of thinking....

Last week she had a math problem with a question like "What tracks does John have to run in order to run 6 km.?" which Lotte answered with "He has to train a lot.."

When we just point at he answer she is very quick to erase the answer... She realises it's wrong, or better said... she guessed wrong. Rather than thinking & asking when she does the exercise she just writes down the first that comes to mind.. 
Her reasoning is probably: If every question has an answer.. homework is finished...

At the end some tears due "trouble" with friends. Some frustration with friend teasing her.
She explained very well how she prefers to play 1 on 1. When there are more she see the other girls whispering and (often rightly probably) thinks its about her.
Then again.. with girls there's a lot of mental stuff going on... difficult for Lotte..
But she also shows wonderful compassion. How she includes other children when she sees someone is by him/her-self. And how she understands that you should not refuse children to play with you if they ask.. and that this is not valid just at school, but also outside school...

Again...
she's doing well... eager to learn, tell & ask in the classroom, eager to learn outside the classroom as well...

Finally a picture of Lotte in her element.. Watching/listening to movies on the iPad with her favorite friend...

2 Video's...

Thanks to: http://buzzsjourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-video.html

Another checkup whooooshed by

Last Tuesday we went to Oslo. On the following day, Wednesday, we had another checkup at the Oslo Medical Centre.. (Refusing to call it a hospital.. that's another wing of the building..)

Plane and Tram to the hotel for a good night rest.

The hotel is next to the hospital, so that's very convenient.

Her teacher was with us. Lotte got 3 new teachers this year, and we found that it's good for them to see the process at least 1 time. It's one way to talk about deafness, about CI, about how much Lotte hears.. it's another thing to be there and see it..
The hospital is huge... and very modern...

The day starts with the technical stuff. The CI processor was checked and adjusted.
Here, program 3 and 4 were removed. That means that when going through the programs, we now go 1-2-1-2-1-2 instead of 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4... In itself a minor thing, since we only use P1 for Lotte. BUT with the "teleslynge" (Hearing Loop) in the classroom and school, we have programmed P2 to be weaker and have the "teleslynge only" on there. P1 will have the "teleslynge" with the microphone activated.
So... to summerise:
P1 = Normal program and Teleslynge with microphone activated (MT).
P2 = Reduced (for loud environments) and Teleslynge without microphone (T).
This was perfectly demonstrated when we tried P2 and the "T"... Lotte didn't hear anything any more.. since there was no teleslynge in that area.. and the microphone was "off".... LOL.. It works..

While all the technical programming was done the audiologist was talking to Lotte about how she was hearing. If everything was OK etc.
It was the first time she was interviewed in this way.. after all.. she's older now.
Still, a lot of questions were difficult for her to answer, and Lotte replied many times "affirmative" to questions she didn't understand... Experienced as she is, the audiologist understands that and will refrase the question, or repeat it...
Still a good conversation...

After that over to the echo-free (anechoic) room.
It's amazing how that room works on a person. The only thing absent in that room is... echo's.. Amazingly.. just walking in that room makes (for me) the hair rise on my skin and gives pressure on my head... All that .. just due to the absence of sound...
Lotte needed to repeat words. First single words which went without problems.
She did 100% until she couldn't understand the word "cat". Tried again... but without luck... Very strange, since there were words that are closer to other words that she understood / repeated without problems. Also .. after the "cat" it was 100% again.... Perhaps she's allergic..

Then, sentences in noise. Previously, it would be words or short sentences, but this time Lotte got "grown-up" sentences at grown-up speed. This because.. well... that's how it is in the real world...
After a slow start she did pretty OK...
One sequence was done with the CI on the shoulders. The following sequence was done with CI on the ears. She did a little better on the last one, indicating that some information might be lost with the CI on the shoulder. Next year, we'll start on the ears, then on the shoulders... if it's still an issue.
All this testing was very good info for Lotte's teacher. Seeing how Lotte struggles with some of the tests gives excellent information to her.

A language comprehension test was done after this. Prepositions etc. Lotte has problems with this.

Information with "not" in there for example. The information in the word "not" is just ignored... resulting in wrong answers.
Also she has problems with distinguishing "on top of" and below... She was very consequent in doing that wrong. Anyway.. lot's of work to to in that area.
Again, for Lotte's teacher, it was very valuable information. Seeing where the problems are will be very beneficial for her when she's teaching Lotte.

This test continued after a lunch break. In the end, Lotte got tired and her answers reflected that. (especially in combination with more difficult questions).

After interpreting the tests we talked about the results.
Lotte is doing very well, and basically the tests show where the attention should be regarding Lotte's development.
Basically... hearing is not a problem. Sure, in noisy environment her ability to hear is reduced.
But, it is much more about catching up the "understanding"-gap left by 2-3 years of deafness... Training the cognitive part of the brain...
Plenty of work to do. For Lotte, for us, the teachers and the rest of the support-group around Lotte..

Hers.... all hers...

November 2010... time flies and our kids grow without us noticing it.
Lotte is growing as wel. Physically and more important, mentally... More and more things become hers.

Homework is hers...

She will start doing it herself, doesn't want help until she needs it, and (fortunately) allows us to check it and make comments.... If she has done anything wrong... she's OK with having to correct it.

They get a list of what to do from school with them... One of the questions was "Can you make two sentenses with the practice-words"... Her answer was a simpel "Yes"... Wonderful..

Handbal is hers...

She started 3 weeks ago. Many girls (and some boys) are playing in a team and she wanted to join. We brought her to the training and she did great. No chance of hearing anything the trainer said to her, but looking at the other children will get you a long way. She has good coordination, throws the ball fine (her dad - former low-level baseball player / catcher practiced with her before the first training...) and is totally at ease...

So much at ease there, that we're no longer allowed to accompany her to the training.. Well... dropping her of  is OK, but not into the training hal...

Last sunday her first games. A tournament in another part of town and she did great... Got a medal for it.. YES..!!

Hearing is hers...
From the phase where hearing was never an issue, where she just put on the CI and went to school, it now becoms clear to her that she has problems to hear at times..
Last week, children had to read aloud from a book. Some of the girls in the classroom speak very softly... Children away from these girls have no possibility to hear them. Nor has Lotte.
The teacher is very committed to making sure Lotte understands everything... So, she asked Lotte.. "Can you hear what they say.?" Lotte couldn't, and "had to" admit that. Thoughtful as the question was... I think that Lotte felt that she was the only one that couldn't hear whas was read aloud..
The teacher explained to her that the girls were reading very softly.... and that she herself couldn't hear then, and the other children couldn't hear either..  But I think Lotte didnt get much of that explanation...
She came home and explained to us that she had trouble understanding others...
That was a first time for us to hear her talk about not being able to hear. (we didn't know the circumstances yet. We were updated later by the teached.. It's great to have such an engaged teacher working with Lotte..)
We comforted her and she forgot about it, and after we got the message from the teacher about what happened, we were able to get back to the incident and explain to Lotte that it was not just she that didn't hear, but many children in the claas, including the teacher.
In retrospect, when a child is speaking so low that other children can't understand what's being said, it would be best to ask any child but Lotte if he/she can hear what's being said... That way, Lotte will understand that other children have the same problem as she.. This time, she thought it was just her..
(Isn't hindsight wonderfull... as they say... "Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.")

This week the school started to use a soundsystem for the classroom...
More about this later

Cued Speech

Sometimes, things just happen to you, to us.
Like in March this year, (And I found out even before that, in October 2006) there was a topic on AllDeaf about Cued Speech. A video in there that can be downloaded from YouTube, giving information about Cued Speech.
I looked at it, and was touched by it, but with my wife being busy with her study, I never mentioned it to her.
Until yesterday, when she asked me what "CS" meant.
I explained, and showed her the video. (See below.)

That struck a cord - big time.
The most amazing thing is that it does not exist in Norway. The information available comes from USA, UK, France and Spain (but I'm sure there are many more countries with lots of info) and shows that it has been used in The Netherlands and also in Denmark. But still.... we never came in contact with it.

So, the last couple of days, the search is on, and my wife is teaching herself CS !!

Some links to more info..
Cued Speech Info

UK organisation - with free info and a course...

USA organisation

BATOD article (The British Association of Teachers of the Deaf)

2005-02-23 - Regarding learning

2005-02 - (February) Education
(From AllDeaf)
I'm Mous and I'm new on this forum. I have three kids, the eldest two are hearing, and I've got a wonderful daughter of 2 1/2 yrs old, that was born deaf. She got a bilateral cochlea-implant last october, and the sound was turned on in November. Our daughter just loves her CI. In the beginning, whenever she would hear a new sound, she would sign "listen!", and all of her face would radiate with pure joy, her whole being would lighten up with excitement.

I'm not writing to you because I want to start a discussion about whether or not to choose CI for children. Here in Norway where I live, that is not so much a discussion anymore. The Deaf community here is in general quite positive towards it, they don't think it will threaten their culture so much, but are aware that it will definitly change it.

However, the discussion going on in this country is about in which way these children should be educated. There is a big contradiction between to groups: one says the kids should only be taught speech (oral), versus an even bigger group that goes for a bilingual speech-development, i.e. Norwegian and Norwegian sign-language. (And there of course is the mixture of spoken language with sign as support, but I don't wish to categorize this as sign-language).
We have chosen for our daughter to be able to learn both languages, so that she later on in life can choose in which arena (hearing or Deaf) she wants to be.
I'm doing an education in sign-language at the university.In addition to that i follow a course that all parents of children with severe hearing-loss get, which is in all 40 weeks of sign-language tuition, over the course of 16 years (or until the child becomes 16). (Paid leave from work.)For the university education I'm writing a paper now, which is about belonging to different cultures (Deaf/hearing), whether this is possible, and what are important factors for a bilingual education to being successful. Lets face it, we do not want the child being half-competent in either of the two languages. Our goal is that the child becomes fluent in both. (In addition to that, we speak a third language at home, dutch).

My question is, are there any people who either have had an implant as a child and have grown up bilingual, or parents who chose an implant for their child and chose the bilingual education for their child in stead of only oral, and what are your experiences? I would love it if you would want to share that with me.
Mous