Amazing World of Speech and Language

With a background in speech-language pathology, naturally I have a certain affinity for language development. With a daughter who has a hearing loss, she makes my interest run deeper. I have learned much over the years about communication development in young children, but am in awe to see the natural process unravel before me with my own daughter. It is truly amazing to see it all unfold, ever so naturally (ok, with a little intervention ;-)

On another occasion I will write more of my daughter's hearing loss, but I must say how overjoyed I am at the progress she has made with language development overall. Her first word, "duck" was at 8 months. She now is 23 months to the day and I cannot count the number of words she has. She commonly uses four word phrases and has a strong, diverse vocabulary. I am so thankful that we found out about her hearing loss so early on, although difficult as it was at the time, we have certainly reaped the benefits of early screening, evaluation, diagnosis, and fitting of her hearing aids. She had her hearing aids by 5 weeks. She does very well with her hearing aids and is ahead of where she needs to be language wise. I'm not saying she is out of the woods as I am aware she will likely have some struggles as she enters school, but for now I am happy.

Here's a couple of my favorite things from her language right now:
Plurals- It's fun to see children messing around and learning about plurals. Currently she says, "oranges" for orange and "lunch boxes" when referring to one lunch box.

One area that may prove difficult, although subtle- She has trouble hearing some high frequency sounds like /s/ and /sh/. In certain circumstances, if she does not hear those sounds, it changes the meaning of the word completely. Here's a funny example from today:

While in the living room excitedly delving into a bag of hand me downs that we love, there stood Little Miss Sunshine with no pants on. I said, "Go get your pants and we can put them on". She then retreated to the kitchen and I could hear a lot of banging. She returned to the living room not with pants, but with PANS! Very subtle, but it completely changed the context. I almost wet my pants laughing. Not a huge mistake, something we all might do, but it seems to be a little more commonplace for my daughter. I can't help but chuckle a bit. And, I must say looking back at the uncertainty we felt when we first were told about her loss, how grateful I am that these are the things she struggles with. I am grateful she can hear the birds chirp, hear my voice, and hear my husband sing. What a blessing in our lives. (Just got my camera back today- I will update with a photo later)