Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Homeschooling a child with Cochlear Implants


Our two year old, Daniel, suffered through a strain of bacterial meningitis last Feb. This has caused many delays and difficulties, but the hardest has been that he is now completely deaf. Thankfully, we were able to get him bilateral cochlear implants (from a company called Cochlear, which gave him their newest N5 which has a cool remote to go with it!). With cochlear implants his hearing is now at almost a 20, which is in the range of a normal child! Woo-hoo! However, we have a weekly speech appointment, and a session with a teacher of the deaf, to help him learn how to hear with this technology and to continue to get to age level with his language. He is catching up very quickly, but it is a lot of hard work. We don't do school yet, of course, but we do lots of singing, nursery rhymes, playing with toys and working hard on language. They recommended that Daniel go to preschool next fall, but we are going to stick with homeschooling, and embrace the challenge. With older siblings, AWANA, and our co-op we feel he will get plenty of peer language exposure.

2 comments:

  1. hello,
    I just came across your blog and am so encouraged. Like you, I am homeschooling my daughter who is bilaterally implanted as well. She is 9 and I also homeschoool my 15 yr. old. thank you for your encouraging blog. With God All things are possible.
    Love In Christ,
    Haela

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you. He should be in kindergarten this year, we are hoping to work through his challenges and keep him home. God bless.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me!