By Carolyn, mum to bi-lateral implant user Lily, aged 9
Progress with the new implant seems to have slowed down now. It is tricky to do as much rehab work as I would like as the older and more confident in her personality Lily becomes, the more likely she is to assert herself and say I don’t feel like doing this tonight. It's so much easier to work with a smaller child!
Sometimes I feel I am doing no good at all when she gets grumpy and frustrated. Still, she is wearing it all the time and we have a microlink connection at school so both ears are being stimulated by the teacher. She is absolutely fine about that.
On her language development in general there are still some thrilling moments.
She was being Mrs Slow coach last week (as every week) – everything else is much more interesting than any of the ‘getting ready for school’ tasks I set her. Being really fed up with the constant dawdle, I said "Lily do you know what ‘quick’ means?"
"Yes of course", she said with a lack of patience.
"Well, can you give me some examples of other words that mean quick?"
Then - continuing the superior attitude - she said fast, and then amazed me by saying …rampaging!
That was of course one of the wonderful moments - I don’t think many nine year olds have rampaging in their vocabulary! – but as far as the second implant is concerned it is particularly hard when I am aware she spends so much of her life ‘hearing compromised’ to deliberately put her into a situation where I am making her hearing worse. Maybe we are both just a bit disheartened because progress is slow. I think I have to be a bit more strict and creative with the rehab.
