Can we imagine what we cannot imagine? This apparent catch-22 sounds like one of my children’s challenge questions to their father, so please let me share this same question stated in another way. Can we ever imagine what it is really like for our child to have a hearing loss when we ourselves are people with typical hearing who have been fully bathed in sound and language for our entire lives?
Try as hard as I might to imagine the impact of being cut off from sound or being cut off from bits and pieces of language each and every day, I simply cannot do it. My head is always so full of very crisp, clear words and language. When quieting my mind in moments of pandemonium all around me, the words still arrive with every phoneme exquisitely articulated. Even if a torrent of thoughts crash into my brain all at one time, I can still hear each and every word with such great precision and clarity.
While other disabilities are no less important, I seem to be able to see or experience them in ways that I cannot with hearing loss. The impact of vision loss isn’t hard for me to imagine. By closing my eyes, I quickly struggle to see all the fine details in my wife and children’s beautiful faces. Nearly all of us have experiences with family members, friends or neighbors who may have severe limitations in physical mobility, so I have no difficulty imagining the impact of life in a wheelchair. Yet when it comes to my daughter Nicole’s daily life with her cochlear implants, I just don’t think there’s a way for me to imagine what I cannot imagine. Even when I listen to the audio simulations of listening through a cochlear implant, my life experiences just don’t permit me to fully get it. Unfathomable is a word that comes to mind to express my inability to imagine.
Most of us, from that very first moment of birth, were surrounded by voices and sounds of activity in the hospital delivery room. Soon we were wrapped in that warm embrace of mother’s sweet and loving voice. As she held us tight, we snuggled so very close to her body. Then once again we could hear that sound of life which was one of our best friend’s for as long as our young minds could remember --- that musical rhythm of mother’s heart.
Each one of our young brains grew rapidly through one of the most powerful developmental processes in human life. Our neural pathways were etched with the blessings of auditory and language development. What incredible neurological wiring occurred in those crucial centers of our brain, while we weren’t even consciously aware of what was transpiring. All through our entire childhood, this development process simply happened.
Our brain wired itself through our active participation in the world of sounds all around us. In those earliest of days, those were the sounds of the voices of our parents as they talked and sang to us. But even more awesome is that our brain also wired itself without our active participation. We heard the love in mother and father’s voices talking to each other. We heard mother talking to our siblings about their day at school. We heard the lyrics of the music on the stereo and the voices on TV. Our little radar ears grabbed everything, and like sponges our brains soaked it in.
My family needed to closely monitor my son’s hearing in the first several years of his life to find out whether he might also have hearing loss. But it wasn’t many years before we found out that he seemed to absorb everything. He constantly entertained and amazed us, as he tried out new words and expressions. We would ask ourselves over and over again where he might have heard it. At times it seems almost incredible what he picked up and still does, but quite simply this is that incredible natural capacity for incidental learning. Amy McConkey Robbins, M.S., CCC-SLP, says it all in one sentence “It [incidental language learning] is the most efficient, and perhaps the only way to truly master a spoken language.”
“Two Paths of Auditory Development for Children with Cochlear Implants,”
by Amy McConkey-Robbins
Loud and Clear Volume 1 Issue 1
A publication of Advanced Bionics Corporation
http://www.bionicear.com/userfiles/File/Vol1Issue1April_98.pdf
We cannot view the needs of our children through the ears and experiences of adults with typical hearing and fully developed auditory and language processing skills. We must open our minds through greater awareness to seek out the knowledge and skills of the experts. We will come to a greater understanding of this most phenomenal process of the development of the mind through incidental learning.
This story is written for Nicole and other children like her. They represent a new generation of children who are physiologically deaf and who have the potential to soar as never before in a world of listening and spoken language. Newborn hearing screening, early intervention services and hearing technology are our 21st century’s combination of three crucial gifts. Combined they have the power to deliver auditory and language development processes that draw ever closer to the level of natural development. Today babies are receiving hearing aids just weeks after birth, and cochlear implants surgeries are being performed at six months of age.
Nevertheless our children remain children with hearing loss, and they still do not hear as well as children with typical hearing abilities. We must use our awareness and knowledge, along with our love and advocacy efforts to fulfill our responsibility as their parents and teachers. Let us provide our children with the equal opportunities for the auditory and language growth of their young minds. Let us set our goals high to bring them as close as possible to growing up to be adults who themselves cannot imagine what they cannot imagine.
Try as hard as I might to imagine the impact of being cut off from sound or being cut off from bits and pieces of language each and every day, I simply cannot do it. My head is always so full of very crisp, clear words and language. When quieting my mind in moments of pandemonium all around me, the words still arrive with every phoneme exquisitely articulated. Even if a torrent of thoughts crash into my brain all at one time, I can still hear each and every word with such great precision and clarity.
While other disabilities are no less important, I seem to be able to see or experience them in ways that I cannot with hearing loss. The impact of vision loss isn’t hard for me to imagine. By closing my eyes, I quickly struggle to see all the fine details in my wife and children’s beautiful faces. Nearly all of us have experiences with family members, friends or neighbors who may have severe limitations in physical mobility, so I have no difficulty imagining the impact of life in a wheelchair. Yet when it comes to my daughter Nicole’s daily life with her cochlear implants, I just don’t think there’s a way for me to imagine what I cannot imagine. Even when I listen to the audio simulations of listening through a cochlear implant, my life experiences just don’t permit me to fully get it. Unfathomable is a word that comes to mind to express my inability to imagine.
Most of us, from that very first moment of birth, were surrounded by voices and sounds of activity in the hospital delivery room. Soon we were wrapped in that warm embrace of mother’s sweet and loving voice. As she held us tight, we snuggled so very close to her body. Then once again we could hear that sound of life which was one of our best friend’s for as long as our young minds could remember --- that musical rhythm of mother’s heart.
Each one of our young brains grew rapidly through one of the most powerful developmental processes in human life. Our neural pathways were etched with the blessings of auditory and language development. What incredible neurological wiring occurred in those crucial centers of our brain, while we weren’t even consciously aware of what was transpiring. All through our entire childhood, this development process simply happened.
Our brain wired itself through our active participation in the world of sounds all around us. In those earliest of days, those were the sounds of the voices of our parents as they talked and sang to us. But even more awesome is that our brain also wired itself without our active participation. We heard the love in mother and father’s voices talking to each other. We heard mother talking to our siblings about their day at school. We heard the lyrics of the music on the stereo and the voices on TV. Our little radar ears grabbed everything, and like sponges our brains soaked it in.
My family needed to closely monitor my son’s hearing in the first several years of his life to find out whether he might also have hearing loss. But it wasn’t many years before we found out that he seemed to absorb everything. He constantly entertained and amazed us, as he tried out new words and expressions. We would ask ourselves over and over again where he might have heard it. At times it seems almost incredible what he picked up and still does, but quite simply this is that incredible natural capacity for incidental learning. Amy McConkey Robbins, M.S., CCC-SLP, says it all in one sentence “It [incidental language learning] is the most efficient, and perhaps the only way to truly master a spoken language.”
“Two Paths of Auditory Development for Children with Cochlear Implants,”
by Amy McConkey-Robbins
Loud and Clear Volume 1 Issue 1
A publication of Advanced Bionics Corporation
http://www.bionicear.com/userfiles/File/Vol1Issue1April_98.pdf
We cannot view the needs of our children through the ears and experiences of adults with typical hearing and fully developed auditory and language processing skills. We must open our minds through greater awareness to seek out the knowledge and skills of the experts. We will come to a greater understanding of this most phenomenal process of the development of the mind through incidental learning.
This story is written for Nicole and other children like her. They represent a new generation of children who are physiologically deaf and who have the potential to soar as never before in a world of listening and spoken language. Newborn hearing screening, early intervention services and hearing technology are our 21st century’s combination of three crucial gifts. Combined they have the power to deliver auditory and language development processes that draw ever closer to the level of natural development. Today babies are receiving hearing aids just weeks after birth, and cochlear implants surgeries are being performed at six months of age.
Nevertheless our children remain children with hearing loss, and they still do not hear as well as children with typical hearing abilities. We must use our awareness and knowledge, along with our love and advocacy efforts to fulfill our responsibility as their parents and teachers. Let us provide our children with the equal opportunities for the auditory and language growth of their young minds. Let us set our goals high to bring them as close as possible to growing up to be adults who themselves cannot imagine what they cannot imagine.
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