Coming out of her shell slowly

I was a shy girl when I was younger so I wasn't surprised when Faith started to become shy soon after her 1st birthday but as time has gone on we realised it was slightly more extreme than normal shyness. Every professional commented on it, kept saying that it made it hard for them to do their assessments, they had to rely on me telling them what sounds she could make and you could see the apprehension on their faces at the beginning as it sounded like I was talking about a different child!

At home she is the bossiest, loudest & most fiesty one out of her older brothers. The complete opposite to what the outside world sees.. They see a shy, timid child who clings to her mummy, who cried if they dared speak to her, who cried everytime someone outside the family came into our home, she couldn't look at them in the face, she would just stare at me and completely blank them. Every session with both the speech therapist and speech rehab lady she stayed completely silent. Her teacher of the deaf at first was the same but the more she got used to her the more she felt comfortable to start making some small noises.

Every mapping (where we go to the cochlear unit at the hospital and they test her hearing & adjust the levels in her processors/add new programmes etc) she never indicated she could hear the sounds they played her, they kept trying to make her use the toys to show them she could hear but she would end up getting fed up or annoyed because she couldn't play until she heard the sound. We were told she was a very difficult child to test/assess so we have never really known how much she can actually hear.

BUT..

This week she finally showed the cracks in her shell by allowing herself to make sounds, to babble, to say some clear words not only to her teacher of the deaf but to her new speech therapist, her speech rehab lady & the BSL group we attend on a weekly basis! I have sat in complete amazement watching her interact with certain people around her. It's only taken a year for her to be comfortable around the people she sees regularly. She has a long way to go but she is showing she can do it.

We worked out that the only way she will vocalise is to let her do what she wants not what the professionals want her to do. Almost every session they choose the activities and try to make Faith take part. It was only when her teacher of the deaf forgot her bag of activities that Faith got to play with her own toys & we were amazed when she started babbling away with ease! So an email was sent to the other professionals telling them to try not doing their activities but instead let Faith do what she wanted to do and finally they are seeing a side of Faith that they never seen before.

Recent assessment has assessed her to having unintelligible speech which basically means majority of her speech is noises/babbling/squealing with the occasional clear word. She has about 20 clear words that people can understand. The assessment also showed that her hearing & language is bang on for her "hearing age" which is 14mths old as that's how long she has had her cochlear implants. Amazing progress considering she doesn't wear them for the length of time she should as she has days when she refuses point blank to wear them.

We have her next mapping in 2 wks & being truthful I'm actually half dreading it as I know I ll get told off if her usage has gone down instead of increasing! But we'll see.. She may surprise us! (wishful thinking!)