Feeding issues with my deaf daughter.

I just have to smile everytime I see Ashley in your avatar. What a cutie! You can just see the spunk oozing out of her!
 
jillio said:
I just have to smile everytime I see Ashley in your avatar. What a cutie! You can just see the spunk oozing out of her!
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Thanks. She is 19 pounds of attitude. She is a feisty one for sure. We wouldn't have her any other way though.
 
Give Ashley a big hug for being such a fighter. :)
 
shel90 said:
I know the feeling. My son is 19 months old and signs about 10 words and has yet spoken a word despite his tests showing that he is not deaf. We are having a special educator come to our house next week to assess him. It is always hard at that age cuz every baby develops at a different pace but my son hasnt spoken a word yet so the drs are concerned. He had a hearing test again last week and it was inconsistent cuz he wasnt cooperating during the test. He is either HOH or delayed in some area..who knows?

Hope all goes well at the feeding clinic! :)
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Shel this is just a thought but maybe your 19 month old doesn't
see any need to speak? If you don't why should he? I had
a friend whose son was hearing, no family hearing problems either.
He didn't start talking till 3 and then they could'nt stop him!
 
ashleysmommy said:
Her dhh teacher and her vision teacher are from the special education department for public schools. They go from school to school to work with kids. She is progressing nicely now as far as developmental. She went from 8- 9 months to 12-13 months in 6 months. Some skills are higher. She went from 6 1/2 months to 12 months on language and expressive. The test they use is for hearing children and children with no vision issues. It is hard to get some responses because of those things. I think she is better than scored but I am the mommy. She gets weekly AVT away from school for an hour. That is up and down depending on how much she feels like cooperating. I have never asked about apraxia. I will though. Thanks. We are still working on the left ear. We are still not sure how much if anything she gets with her hearing aid. We go to the audi on the 30th for booth testing and mapping for her implant. Her eye appointment went well. Her eyes are stable. No changes for now. The glasses are doing their job the doc said. We go back in July for another check with him. Ashley is going to be a busy girl for a while. We have also been refereed to a geneticist. Hope to get some answers on her weight issue. Her doc wants to rule everything medical out before he blames it on her dad. He is very small framed his grandfather is small framed so I think she gets some of it from them. Doc said better safe than sorry. Enough for now.
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Wow! You are one busy mommy! Please remember to let daddy take
over sometimes and take a nice hot soak in the bath tub, or treat
yourself to a hair do at the beauty shop! Take care of the mommy
too!:fingersx:You are doing a wonderful superhuman job!
 
She is progressing nicely now as far as developmental. She went from 8- 9 months to 12-13 months in 6 months. Some skills are higher. She went from 6 1/2 months to 12 months on language and expressive. The test they use is for hearing children and children with no vision issues. It is hard to get some responses because of those thinis better than scored but I am the mommy. She gets weekly AVT away from school for an hour. That is up and down depending on how much she feels like cooperating. I have never asked about apraxia. I will though. Thanks. We are still working on the left ear. We are still not sure how much if anything she gets with her hearing aid. We go to the audi on the 30th for booth testing and mapping for her implant. Her eye appointment went well. Her eyes are stable. No changes for now. The glasses are doing their job the doc said.
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Excellent! That really is a good jump. She'll have delays for awhile. If I recall correctly even most "just deafblind" kids have significent developmental issues early on. Heck, even most just deaf or just blind kids have significent developmental issues early on. It's still early yet.
I am very happy that you're supplementing with AVT. Some parents think that you need to go whole hog with trying to get dhh kids to aquirre oral skills, but the key really is the quality of the therapy, not nessarily the quanity. (like they think that they have to reject sign and concentrate exclusively on oral only) Just one word of advice if I may. If the AVT seems more like the type of classes that overacheiving parents enroll their kids in, rather then something fun.........maybe find another speech therapist who is more fun. Although I gotta say that I think that speech therapy is kinda fun early on.......When Ashley gets a little older have her help in her therapy decisions. I was in (all kinds) of therapy as a kid..........When I was little it was a lot of fun, but when I was in elementary school it just got boring as heck!
That's good that her vision has stabilized. Is her vision decent with her glasses?
 
Her vision is OK. She has peripheral problems and runs into things on her sides sometimes.Her lenses are so thick they distort things to the side. She has been in AVT therapy for over a year now. She started that 3 months before she was implanted. I have made sure that her school as well as her therapist know my daughter is deaf. She hears with the help of an implant. She is visually impaired she sees better with glasses. I have no guarantees with either of the aids she uses. I want her to have a means to communicate with or with out them. I want to be taught so I can communicate with her with or with out them. I have not hit any bumps yet. I am having trouble finding somewhere to learn sign and braille. I am going to contact the person that has been a great help at the Deaf Blind Project of Virginia. I am sure he can help.
 
I have no guarantees with either of the aids she uses. I want her to have a means to communicate with or with out them. I want to be taught so I can communicate with her with or with out them. I have not hit any bumps yet. I am having trouble finding somewhere to learn sign and braille.
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Excellent!
That is so awesome! I am so glad you've got that attitude! If only there were more parents out there like you. Go to the Deaf School and ask about Sign classes. Braille isn't too important for parents to know....it's mostly for the blind person. They ARE really pushing Braille literacy in the Blind population, now which is good. My best friend went to Perkins (School for the Blind) in the '90's and he didn't even get a chance to learn Braille!
 
deafdyke said:
Excellent!
That is so awesome! I am so glad you've got that attitude! If only there were more parents out there like you. Go to the Deaf School and ask about Sign classes. Braille isn't too important for parents to know....it's mostly for the blind person. They ARE really pushing Braille literacy in the Blind population, now which is good. My best friend went to Perkins (School for the Blind) in the '90's and he didn't even get a chance to learn Braille!
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Maybe Ashley's mom wants to learn Brialle so she can connect with her daughter.
 
fredfam1 said:
Shel this is just a thought but maybe your 19 month old doesn't
see any need to speak? If you don't why should he? I had
a friend whose son was hearing, no family hearing problems either.
He didn't start talking till 3 and then they could'nt stop him!
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He is delayed in ASL too. He is making nice progress though. Now at the 18 to 20 month range and he is 27 months old. Before, he was a year delayed in both signing and speech hence our concerns.

That's why we got a speech/language specialist working with him just in case he has some cognitive delays but it is looking like he doesnt have any issues with cognitive processing so far.
 
Ashleysmommy...I am glad that things are going well!

Keep up the good work! :)
 
Her vision is OK. She has peripheral problems and runs into things on her sides sometimes.Her lenses are so thick they distort things to the side.
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So is she basicly functionally low vision with her glasses?
My best friend is like that too. He's legally blind but can see with glasses.
Are you getting Ashely the whole spectrum of services with Blind ed too?
(eg cane travel etc etc etc)
Oh and Shel, language delays may indicate a learning disabilty. It's a very common early sign.
 
Oh and at least he's only seven months behind............that rocks! Wait a while, and he may have a big language leap.
 
The school sent an orientation mobility specialists to the house to evaluate Ashley on how well she gets around. This was to see if she needed any special training. With her glasses she sees about a foot or more depending on what she is looking at. Without it is about 6 to 8 inches. She does very well. I have not gotten the report yet to see what they suggest. I am open to all they offer.
 
ashleysmommy said:
The school sent an orientation mobility specialists to the house to evaluate Ashley on how well she gets around. This was to see if she needed any special training. With her glasses she sees about a foot or more depending on what she is looking at. Without it is about 6 to 8 inches. She does very well. I have not gotten the report yet to see what they suggest. I am open to all they offer.
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It is so great that Ashley is getting such comprehensive services at such a young age, and also that you are so open to what they have to offer. Keep us informed.
 
Oh that's good. And hopefully in the fall Ashley can start at the Deaf-Blind school, go there for a few years(gotta get that solid foundation of early intervention/early grades in) and then decide what to do from there. Do they have a specific Deaf-Blind program there? I do know that the school where you are, mainly serves multihandicapped kids. (like MR/autistic etc) The school in Staunton is way better for academic kids. However, the quality of early intervention at specialized schools, is such that even schools which mainly serve severely/multihandicapped kids, tend to have a lot of just blind just deaf kids in their early education programs.
 
Oh wow............I just found out that they are closing the Hampton campus, to consolidate it with the Staunton campus.
However, they ARE going to continue with a special day school program. Hopefully Ashley can take advantage of that.....and I'm not sure when precisely they are going to close the Hampton campus. Hopefully Ashely will get a year or two in before it closes. A school for the Deaf, is really a superb resource.
 
They have been talking about closing it for a while now. I am not sure of a date. The preschool program will continue from what I understand. We plan to look into all of that. Her CSB worker is looking into it for me.
 
deafdyke said:
Oh wow............I just found out that they are closing the Hampton campus, to consolidate it with the Staunton campus.
However, they ARE going to continue with a special day school program. Hopefully Ashley can take advantage of that.....and I'm not sure when precisely they are going to close the Hampton campus. Hopefully Ashely will get a year or two in before it closes. A school for the Deaf, is really a superb resource.
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*Sigh* They've been talking about closing the Hampton School for years (there are two VSDBs in VA - one in Staunton and one in Hampton. The deaf community just call the one in Staunton VSDB and the one in Hampton the Hampton school for the Deaf) but I do expect that it will happen one day due to dwindling popuations. The last time I went to VSDB, they had only 120 students left and we're talking about pre school to 12 grade. I must confess I'm not up to date though.

It's hoped VA won't close the Hampton School as you'd have to send Ashely like 300 miles away.
 
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