This site is devoted to sharing our family's story of the journey from deaf to hearing for our third son, Elliot, and our fourth son, Oliver. Our goal is to provide help, information, and encouragement to other families with children who are also dealing with profound hearing loss.
Elliot was born in January 2001 with profound, bilateral hearing loss and received a cochlear implant at 9 months of age. In August 2006, Elliot was implanted with a second, bilateral, implant. Our fourth child was born in May 2006 and we learned in the first week of his life that he also had profound bilateral hearing loss. Oliver received his first implant at six months of age, exactly, and his second CI at a little over 11 months. Our first two children, Nicholas and Alexander, were both born with normal hearing.
Along with cochlear implantation, we are
firm believers in the power of Auditory-Verbal Therapy to
fully develop both receptive and expressive language. We
have used the services of the AV center in Atlanta, GA
where we live. Elliot used
to participate AVT in Denver when we lived in Colorado,
"graduating" after 2.5 years of weekly sessions. Oliver
just graduated at age 2. No more therapy!
Both of Elliot's cochlear implants and
Oliver's implant are manufactured by Med-El which is headquartered in Innsbruck,
Austria. As a clarification (due to skepticism about us
and our site)-- though we are very happy with our
manufacturer, we have never received any compensation or
recommendations regarding our website, which we created
on our own. We are thankful to the inventors, engineers,
surgeons and all involved in the making of these great
devices. Welcome, enjoy and feel free to contact us with
questions! However, hate mail will be
deleted.
I'm an Auditory Verbal Graduate! I love to talk!
"Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind -
even if your voice shakes."
Maggie Kuhn
"No
pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or
sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the
human spirit."
Helen Keller
"If
you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the
corridor in the other direction."
"It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that
they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear
opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between
alternatives that are not their
own."
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for
its children."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
..."identification
of newborn hearing loss should be considered a
neurodevelopmental emergency!" Carol Flexer, from
"Neurological Foundations of Listening and Talking" a
chapter from
CHILDREN WITH HEARING LOSS:
"Sometimes
we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too
late the one that is open."
Alexander Graham Bell