By Dr Belinda Barnet, Swinburne University
Laura has the sweetest voice. When she sings Katy Perry songs she can make you cry. Not just because she was born deaf, so it’s a miracle that this four-year-old can sing at all, but because she sings with such gusto that you find yourself laughing at her precocity.
She’s also prone to spouting confident one-liners such as, “If God exists why can’t he talk?” or, “When I grow up I’ll make a robot that does the washing and gives massages”. This happens at inopportune moments, for example, in the middle of the intersection at peak hour when you’re racing to collect the other kids after school. Not the time to have discussions about supernatural beings, really.
I try to just listen and enjoy this little human – this can be hard given I’m deaf too – but this joy was a long time coming. God, it’s about time, given what we’ve been through. We need a laugh and she is great at bringing it on.
A Hunt for Answers
In the early years, there were so many appointments, doctors, tests, bad news, more tests, and roll-out hospital beds that smelt like disinfectant. I remember the moment the audiologist at RCH told me that yes, this baby is profoundly deaf, we can confirm it now. I remember sobbing, cradling this four-month-old blonde cherub, and then sobbing again. I remember the colour of the carpet. The blinking audiogram on the computer screen, so stubbornly flat, like a still shot from the movie Flatliners. Calling my sister who tried to console me.
I don’t think I breathed for the first two years of her life. It was a blur of medical appointments, bad news, waiting rooms, “auditory brainstem response” caps covered with electrodes, and more bad news.
The Search Pays Off
The good news is this: if you get in early, if you implant/aid early, if you do all the therapy and exercises afterwards, then it’s likely your kid will be singing Roar at the top of her lungs in peak hour too. She might also tell you that your hair is looking grey and needs the roots done again – you’re starting to look a bit old. Once the talking starts it never stops.
Although they are not 100 per cent successful in all babies, the medical literature suggests that most children implanted before 12 months of age develop normal language skills at a rate that is comparable to normal-hearing children. The predictors are: age at implantation, presence or absence of other disabilities, and, oddly, maternal education.
A Journey of Many Steps
It does take work. Maybe “maternal education” is code for “can afford the time and has the resources to attend every appointment”. Early speech path is hard; it’s repetitive, very repetitive, and it never ends. Every moment is what you’ll come to see as a teachable moment.
There’s no such thing as simply having dinner: there is naming and talking about every food item, not handing the item over until a word approximation is made, rewarding every approximation with a bright and careful re-articulation of the word.
In the beginning, before the words start, it’s easy to despair that they will never come. But you must pick yourself back up. You must sit that baby on the carpet and fly the red plane and make an “Ahh” sound 50 times before it works. Eventually it will work. She’ll say ‘Ahh’ and you will sigh with relief and joy and email your speechie, who is probably sick of getting emails about every single new sound. Then it’s on to the next exercise.
For Laura, it took a good two years of work, appointments and exercises after implantation (she was implanted at 11 months old) to get her talking “in normal range”. This is code for “sounds like a normal 3-year-old”. Oh, you’ll learn lots of code words too.
A Happy Ending
If you’re reading this because you’ve just been told your kid is deaf: know that it is very likely he or she will be fine. I grew up with a hearing loss that’s profound on the left, mild on the right. I’m used to repositioning myself in rooms and lip-reading when people are too far away, smiling and nodding when hearing is impossible, and being mistaken for a rude person when I don’t respond. It’s difficult at times, but it has never stopped me achieving what I wanted to achieve in life.
Belinda leads a team of researchers developing an app called GetTalking, which will help children with cochlear implants learn to talk.