Preschool is out for the summer.

Norahs time in preschool was short but she really liked it. She does not understand it is out for the summer, we will miss it. Norah will be turning five soon but next year we are going to send her back to this school because it is the closest thing to an oral- signing deaf school in Arkansas. What I mean by that is at the school they will sign with Norah in SEE2 the same way we do at home and talk to her at the same time, like her hearing peers. With Norah their hands and voices are always on so she is getting visual cues to go with the words she is hearing. She is the only one in the class that uses sign, the rest of the kids are working on becoming oral only but they were Implanted at age two or younger so they not only get the benefit of early intervention but they have been hearing for over two years now. The next year will be a very important one for Norah because Lori and I decided when we first got Norah and did research on late implanted CI kids that we would try to do our best to not get discouraged with Norah’s progress until she has been fully bilaterally implanted for one year. If at that time we see Norah making progress towards understanding speech we would keep moving towards a more hearing form of communication setting. If she looks like she is still stuck not understanding speech at all after one year of being bilaterally implanted then we will reassess how far she has come and the speed of her progress at that time. She has just started labeling things with speech to her best ability. My hope right now is that Norah is soaking up every thing right now like a sponge and sorting it out in her head, and when her mouth catches up with her brain we will see she was understanding a lot more then she let on. She is already showing signs that that is happening. I just won’t know the extent of it for awhile. It will take about a month to get her into a good map with her new ear, she will then have the hearing capability to become oral. We just need to see if her brain can store, process and spit back out the information it is finally receiving.