Blaze's Cochlear Implant Story, Part 3

Blaze and his twin brother Gunner were born 25 weeks premature with a host of complications. In the days following their birth, Blaze would show signs of hearing loss. Once it was determined that Blaze was deaf, his mother Stephanie considered cochlear implant surgery. This three-part series shows their journey through the process of surgery, activation and therapy.

Read more about Blaze's story here: http://blog.uvahealth.com/2019/11/25/...

Transcript
Lorin Bobsin, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT: A listening and spoken language therapy session with a child with a cochlear implant really focuses on all the skills that child might need for communication. When a child gets a cochlear implant, even though that child maybe 12 months of age or nine months of age, their ears on that day are newborn. And so we start from the beginning. And we look at natural trajectory of development, and we start that child with the very first three-month goals that we would expect from a three-month-old infant.

And many times in traditional speech therapy, the parents aren't involved. But in a listening and spoken language therapy session, the parents are in the room and actively involved. And it's mostly about working with the parents and giving the parents the skills they need to carry over the objectives once the family gets back home. In doing so, I try to tell families that if we get early intervention, if we have appropriate technology and qualified professionals and a parent who's motivated and dedicated, that child will develop to whatever level he would or she would have developed had she not had a hearing loss.

This past week we worked on body parts. So we talked about his eyes, and his nose, and his mouth, and his ears, and his belly. And we did a lot of work in looking in the mirror and not only having him identify these particular body parts on his favorite doll or his favorite bear, his favorite stuffed animal at home, but we also wanted him to be able to identify on his own.

He is an absolute joy to see in therapy because he hears everything, and he's understanding 15 or 20 words at this point at least. And he's saying eight or nine words at this point. And his mom always says, "He talks so much more at home than at therapy."

Yesterday during his session, we started singing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider." As soon as he heard it, even with mom not being in his sight, he put his fingers together to do the "Itsy Bitsy Spider." And I was like, he understands what that is.

Blaze Ross: I love you.

Stephanie Nuckols (off camera): I love you.

Blaze: I love you.

Stephanie: I love you.