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Date Posted:13:10:43 08/11/05 Thu Author Host/IP: NoHost/69.137.241.199
My son was diagnosed as deaf at the age of 2 1/2. It was a complete suprise to us and to two speach therapists that were working with him at the time. We are certain he coluld hear at the age of two and wde are not sure waht caused the loss of hearing since he has a complicated medical history. We had noticed some odd behaviors, but noone had given us any indiaction of what was behind it.
We opted for a cochlear implant. When his implant was activated for the first time he reacted violently to the new sound input and refused to go anywhere near the device.
As he entered a preschool, his teachers suggested we have him tested. We found that he is autistic. No wonder he rejected the implant.
We met with a speech therapist that specializes in cochlear implants with special needs, especially autism. We worked to get him to wear the implant with no power and then very gradually increased the 'volume'.
Once we activated the implant we saw imediate behavior improvement. Small improvement, but improvement. As the private speech therapy and the preschool, K and 1st grade teachers ahve worked with him (signing, beahvior modification, speech etc), he has made great strides. We are now at 100% 'volume' and his hearing (speech recognition) is improving daily and he he starting to speak.
We just completed implant surgery in his other ear. We had noticed that he made attempts to 'block out' sound input from his non implanted ear. Our speech therapist and doctor felt that the little sound (130 Db) that he could hear in that ear was interferring with his speech recognition. We have not activiated his second implant yet and we are seeing improved speech and he no longer puts his hand over his ear to block out the distracting sounds.
I know implants are controversial in the deaf community and implanting autistic kids is rare. We chose the implants before we knew about the autism, but the results seem to be good for us. We are lucky to have a great support system: insurance to pay for the cochlear and speech therapy, a great speech therapist that is aware of the needs of autistic children and a very coperative school that is willing to work with us and our speech therapist to create a quality learning enviorment for our son.
