Charles on… anything that comes along

Want to delight a deaf child? Stand them next to a smoke alarm and turn it on. Loud? To you, yes. To them, audible. baby3 loves that game. And afterwards, he likes trying to imitate the noise.

He’s getting better at hitting the pitch and he doesn’t do badly for volume either. Wow. It is noisy.

OK, so now we’ve got a “switch-on” date for baby3, in the middle of July. (Interestingly Tom, whose father has written about his child’s recovery from meningitis and subsequent implant, has almost the same day for switch-on, despite having been implanted a few weeks later. Difference? Tom is about six months older than baby3; had language already; and received his implant from the team at Nottingham, rather than Cambridge. Nottingham is the pioneering centre in this country. One wonders what led to the differences. I suspect that it’s better to re-acquire language sooner; but that if you’ve been deaf since birth, a week here or there won’t make much difference.

However the months and years do make a difference, as this Eurekalert article on the benefits of early implantation demonstrates:

“Bye-bye, bye-bye,” said one 3 and a half-year old child, born deaf but with a cochlear implant that partially restored hearing nine months earlier. That’s the most complex speech the child uttered during a testing session that involved play with a toy train set.

In contrast, a child of the same age who had a cochlear implant 31 months earlier made more sophisticated statements: “OK, now the people goes to stand there with that noise and now — Woo! Woo!” and “OK, the train’s coming to get the animals and people.”

The testing session was part of research that indicates the earlier a deaf infant or toddler receives a cochlear implant, the better his or her spoken language skills at age 3 and a half. The research was conducted by Johanna Grant Nicholas, Ph.D., research associate professor of otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and colleague Ann E. Geers, Ph.D., from the Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The centre visitor came along the other day to give us a dummy external processor, so baby3 can get used to having it on for a week before the real one is activated. Experimentally, we put it on (it’s weird; the coil finds its home, in that self-navigating way of magnets); he was completely untroubled, running about playing peek-a-boo delightedly, not noticing it. Since there’s nothing actually stuck in your ear - a big contrast to hearing aids - it does mean that children are less troubled by them. I understand the sensation: I’ve repeatedly tried in-ear headphones that block out external sound. I end up feeling like there’s a worm in there, and it’s all dank, and also with my ears ringing - somehow I set the volume too loud in a way I don’t with earbud headphones.

The centre visitor watched baby3 running around and squawking delightedly. “I think it’ll be like turning on a tap,” she said. We’ll wait and see.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Would you want your child to be born deaf? Some would (29 March 2006; score: 46.42%)
• What the 42-years-deaf person said about her cochlear implant (1 September 2006; score: 45.5%)
• BBC programmes on deafness on 'Listen Again' (13 June 2005; score: 43.57%)