Lucy began therapy at 12 months old. She was fitted with a frequency transposition hearing aid to give her maximum hearing for speech sounds during the year of listening training that preceded her cochlear implant surgery. With training, she began to respond to sound. Her parents worked diligently to apply the principles of the Auditory-Verbal philosophy in their daily lives. Lucy and her mother attended two therapy sessions each week. Her mother became a master at teaching her daughter about sound and encouraging her speech development with vocal play and babbling. Lucy began babbling "mum-mum-mum" and "buh-buh" sounds. Nearing her second birthday, she was using a few words such as "ow", "more", "no", "uh-oh", and "bye-bye." Her profound deafness, however, made every new sound and word laborious to teach.

Lucy underwent surgery for a cochlear implant on her second birthday. She responded to it instantly and asked to wear it within days of her hookup. Lucy had all the characteristics for a good prognosis for receiving maximum benefit from the cochlear implant. Her hearing loss was diagnosed before a year of age; she had early fitting of appropriate technology; her mother assumed the role of teacher of listening and verbal development; they attended therapy consistently; and the principles of the Auditory-Verbal philosophy were applied from infancy forward throughout daily living. Sign language was not used and she was raised as a hearing and speaking child by her parents.

In the months to follow implantation, she exploded with hearing, speech and verbal language. At 3 ½ years old, she talks freely using many two word phrases and some with three words. Examples of her spoken language include: Sophie car, orange horse, give Lucy balloon, Mommy fall down, Daddy office, etc. Her voice quality is normal and she loves to sing. In just 1 ½ years with the cochlear implant, Auditory-Verbal therapy and home programming, she has acquired the expressive and receptive language skills similar to a 2 to 2 1/2 year old child with normal hearing.

Lucy’s father writes, "Before learning about the implant, we tried to envision a life without sound and with limited communication ability...certainly not the future we dreamed of for our only child. The implant allows our family to function as a hearing unit--now we hold the same hopes and dreams as any parent, recognizing that Lucy’s success will require more work and more time."

Kirsten’s hearing loss was diagnosed at eleven months of age. She wore two ear level hearings aids and an FM system at all times so one of her parent's voices was directed into her hearing aids during her waking hours. She and her parents participated therapy twice a week: we played on the floor in my office making choo-choo sounds, barking like dogs, and doing whatever we could to teach Kirsten to hear and associate sounds with toys, dolls, and animals. Slowly but equally as surely, Kirsten began to respond to sound. Kirsten began to say the same first words as any toddler as the first year of therapy unfold..."bye-bye," "more," "no," "mama," "dada."

By two years of age she started putting two words together just like her hearing peers. One day in therapy, she pointed to a barefoot doll and said, "not shoe!" Three months before her third birthday, Kirsten received a cochlear implant. Several months after the hookup, we noticed the difference. Her memory for new words and phrases was improving and it became difficult keeping up with her vocabulary and language growth.

Kirsten is now seven years old. She made her dancing debut with the HEAR to Dance Kids in downtown Dallas and did a little solo on stage for all to see and hear. She danced to her own words pre-taped for the production. The audience heard in perfect speech... "My name is Kirsten. I’m six years old. My birthday is November 18th. My favorite kind of ice cream is chocolate!" Kirsten attends her neighborhood school and is in first grade: she is learning to read, write and talk on the telephone. She can understand speech on the television and learns slang and silly phrases from her favorite videos. Kirsten is a like other girls her age, exhausting her parents with endless questions and her thoughts about the world.

Kirsten’s mother adds, "When we found out our daughter was deaf, our vision of her future died. We were told she probably would not speak and were just trying to make if from day to day. Looking at her now, I never thought she would be in a regular class, in a regular public school and regular everything. In fact, she had a teacher every day for an hour a day for five months and the teacher did not know she was hearing impaired. We now feel that Kirsten can do anything she sets her mind to. We know that she will graduate from high school with full reading abilities so that she can go on to college. The cochlear implant and Auditory-Verbal therapy have given Kirsten and our family our lives back. We can now try to live as normally as possible."

When asked about her hearing, Kirsten proclaims: "I don’t like to hear static on tv, lions growling, and elephants... they’re too loud." She continues, "I like to hear music, popcorn popping, my dancing teacher, playing on the telephone, the Rescuers on tv, movies-- especially 101 Dalmatians, and my mom's clown that moves his head and whistles."

At the time Micky was adopted at six months, he weighed just eight pounds. His parents nurtured him to health and discovered his deafness at one year of age. His mother remembers, "Within the first five minutes the audiologist told me that my son would never talk. I was so mad that I vowed to teach him to speak! By eighteen months he began Auditory-Verbal therapy because we envisioned him being very lonely in a hearing world if he couldn’t learn to speak."

Micky’s progress was slow. In addition to his severe hearing loss, he had almost continuous ear infections making him profoundly deaf most of the time. The hearing aids were of little benefit, and as a few years went by, his language acquisition advanced very slowly. Not sure if he would qualify for an implant, I referred him to the doctor to begin the evaluation process. He was 4 ½ and was told he could be scheduled for surgery.

Micky is now a different child! The moody and sullen little boy has transformed into a happy, confident seven year old whose standards are difficult for anyone to meet. He is getting straight A’s in first grade and loves to read and write. His mother reports, "He is speaking more clearly every day. He calls his implant his ‘battery’ and won’t let anyone touch it. His language has exploded and now all of us--parents, teachers, therapists--have come to realize how smart he really is. The implant is wonderful. He comes home from school learning new words all on his own. Micky is going to function very well in the hearing world. He will be able to do anything that he can imagine. He especially loves the dancing program with the other cochlear implant kids. He talks about dancing all the time. The implant and Auditory-Verbal therapy have kept us together as a mainstream hearing family. Micky will be able to have a normal hearing life! We live in a small town and have only met one other child who is hearing impaired. What a lonely school experience that would have been. I would recommend Auditory-Verbal therapy and the cochlear implant for every child. It is so great to see your deaf child talking with other children in a regular classroom."

Lori was a gorgeous little three year old. Profoundly deaf, she did not speak and communicated with her parents in sign language. She had multiple disorders and her mother recalls, "We were told that she would communicate primarily by signing. We were told that our attempts to teach her to talk would be in vain. It was difficult for me to imagine what her life would be like as an adult. I was unsure if verbal communication was possible; but her parents and I wanted to see how far she could go. Although she developed some responses with her hearing aids, the other children in my practice were doing so well with the cochlear implant that her parents had her implanted before she turned four.

Lori is now ten years old and would rather talk than do anything else. She has a beautiful voice quality, an endearing personality, and is a joy to be with. She wants to know everything about everyone. She loves to dance and takes jazz and tap classes with her girlfriends. She attends a partially mainstreamed class for oral hearing impaired children. Her associated disorders make learning more difficult, but she works hard and is learning to read. With her mother’s help, Lori is learning to talk on the telephone.

Her mother continues, "Before getting the cochlear implant, Lori seemed isolated from much of what was going on around her. I now have more hope for a normal life since she has had the implant. It has given us the ability to talk to her verbally and she can interact with others as well. Lori loves music and dancing. Thanks to the implant, she can enjoy both. It has given her more hearing than we were led to expect it would. Lori can hear things she never could before. Also, it is now possible to talk to her through closed doors! The implant and therapy go hand-in-hand. We now have a hard of hearing child who can talk and hear instead of a deaf child who can do neither. It has been a miracle."

About her hearing, Lori says the following: "I don’t like to hear loud noises, thunder and rain and tornadoes and wind and I don’t like to hear babies crying. I like to talk to my friend Kelly a long time on the telephone...I like to learn how to sing songs...I love the song ‘Tomorrow’...I like the bell choir at church... I hear the radio and tv and singers with microphones...I like to hear my cats meow and my dogs say ‘woof woof’...I’m so happy I can hear."

Paul moved to Dallas at the age of five. Born prematurely, he contracted meningitis at eight weeks of age: he remained in the hospital for the first three months of her life. The illness resulted in profound deafness, dyspraxia, and language and learning disabilities. His parents say they were "given no hope that he would ever talk." Paul was fitted with hearing aids and began speech therapy at four months of age. Although her questions about the implant were met with discouraging words, his mother always had hope for it as he drew closer to his second birthday.

At two, Paul was implanted and his parents "began to see it was working wonderfully." Paul has had it now for six years. He talks nonstop and is an extremely auditory child. His other disorders still cause articulation errors and his language and learning disabilities make his language grow more slowly, but there is little we can’t explain to him and he talks constantly. He attends a private school for children with learning differences and is beginning to read and write and do math.

Paul loved the dancing program. In his mother’s words, "The dancing program was a wonderful way to show the kids that they do fit in. Paul felt it was something special that he got to do and he really had a lot of fun participating with friends that were like him."

Regarding all the years of therapy for her son, "I have always been told that I was hard headed and that I had a mind of my own. Well...I decided upon his diagnosis that my little boy would learn to talk and I have never swayed from that decision. It’s been a long hard road, but we are now seeing that hearing and speaking with the implant is preparing Paul to function in the hearing world when he is old enough to go out on his own."

Here’s an example of the little things that are such a joy for his mother. "Two days ago we were sitting in Linda’s office having a therapy session Linda had her windows open because it was such a beautiful day. Right in the middle of an activity, Paul looked toward the window and said, ‘Do you hear that? The bird’s loud outside.’ I never dreamed I would hear my son saying that the birds were loud! That was almost unimaginable. He has made me so proud of him."

I met Tyler the day after his implant was hooked up. He was five and a half years old, communicated in sign language and had just finished his first semester of kindergarten in a deaf education class where sign language was used for instruction and communication. When I started therapy, he readily imitated all of the vowels and vocal play sounds I made. Though he was already in school when implanted, I felt that Tyler would do very well in an Auditory-Verbal approach with his cochlear implant. I recommended he enroll in the regular kindergarten class for second semester and repeat kindergarten the following fall in order to have nearly two years to lean to talk before entering first grade.

Tyler was the hardest working child I had ever seen. He was determined to hear and talk and be like the other people in his extended family. Now 10 ½, Tyler has had the implant for five years. His mother’s words say it all, "We were told that his speaking would be very limited...that he would have to rely on sign language and lip-reading to communicate and that he would need deaf education classes throughout school. We were very devastated. I was very concerned about his opportunity to get an education."

"Now that Tyler has the cochlear implant, I wish we had done it sooner. With the implant he wants us to talk, talk, talk! He does not like sign language any more. The implant and therapy have enabled his to communicate with others as normally as hearing people. It has made the greatest impact on all our lives. You cannot imagine the feeling the first time a hearing impaired child says "mommy!" Tyler now is in fourth grade and reads on a sixth grade level. He goes to regular school, talks on the phone, can hear cars, dogs barking, rain, and birds. Everything I thought he could never do--he does! He is an "A" student in our neighborhood school. He reads well, speaks well, understands well and has surpassed all our wildest dreams."

According to Tyler, "I don’t like to hear the sound of the electric pencil sharpener, wind blowing, and my dog--Oreo--barking. I like to hear balloons pop, cats purr, kids laughing, birds chirping, dogs squealing, fire crackling, snakes hissing, and cats meowing happily."