the end of an era and some reflections

A couple weeks ago we had our last speech therapy session at the children's hospital. We have been going every week since Ellis's CI was activated 21 months ago. He does get speech therapy, both group and privately, in school, but we had been going to CHOP for a little extra. It was also nice to have his therapist's input on his development, since she has more CI experience than Ellis's school (which is actively striving to improve their CI services; don't want to discredit them). CHOP Therapist and School Therapist also communicated closely, so it was a great situation for Ellis. But, happy for Therapist, she just had a baby girl! And only plans on returning to work part-time. So we decided to go with just the school therapy for awhile and see how he does, checking in with Therapist every few months at CHOP.

I think it will be a nice break for Ellis, to let things sink in for awhile. He's not a CI wunderkind. He's not the kind of kid who falls in love with his CI and wants to wear it all the time. There are often a couple hours a day where he doesn't want to wear it--almost two years after getting. And it requires a little extra effort (than another kid with CI in similar circumstances) on his part to speak and to listen. But he steadily, very gradually improves. For instance, for months and months and months, he's been calling me "Mah-eee". We've worked and worked and worked at getting him to say "MoMMy", which he can do in a therapy session, but won't spontaneously say. Lately, I'm "Mahtee". Well, at least we got a consonant in there.

For Ellis, I think his first language is truly American Sign Language. We've tried to give him as equal opportunity in both spoken English and ASL as we can. We've provided the same kind of CI environment (talk, talk, talk, narrate, narrate, narrate) that other hearing families do. But without stopping signing either. For us it's a whole language environment. We don't care so much that he learns to speak just like any old hearing child (though prospects are good for pretty good speech); we do care that he always has as much access to language as possible.

I recently caught Ellis signing in his sleep. Now if that isn't native language behaviour, I don't know what is.