Oh Wonderful Listening Day!

We are really loving our new parent/infant educator, provided to us through Ohio's Regional Infant Hearing Program. Unfortunately, she is one of two people who services well over 80 families in this area and therefore only get to see her for one hour each month. Yesterday was our second time to see her, but really our first true therapy session. Even though Aiden was slightly under the weather, he performed beautifully. He responds very well to Miss N. and I can tell he really likes her.

She started with testing the lings and Aiden responded each time by holding the chip up to his ear, listening, and then dropping the chip into the empty diaper wipes case (great idea for reuse). Holy crap. We just may have this conditioned response thing down. I can only hope it carries over to the soundbooth in a couple weeks when we go back for another mapping.

After reviewing our previous month's activities (eating, sleeping, and going down the slide) with Aiden, she brought each item out (the Little People, the bed, the table, and the slide) and would say, "Oh, the boy is hungry. He wants to sit down and eat" or "Yawn, the boy is tired. He needs to go to bed." Sure enough, for the most part, Aiden performed each scenario correctly. He's getting it. He's not repeating much, but by golly, he's taking it all in, and he's getting it! He even gave us a couple spontaneous "bowwwn" (down) as he slid the boy down the slide (in which we always say "wheeee", but in which he refuses to say - grrrr).

The highlight of the day was a sound discrimination activity using musical instruments. We have never done this with Aiden before and both Miss N. and I were amazed at how quickly he caught on. She started by bringing out two cow bells, talked about them ("one for YOU and one for ME", "look, they're the SAME", "LISTEN to the sound they make"), they'd play them together, and she'd say, "Okay STOP! *pause for silence* Now, put the bell down." Then put hers away, out of sight, but left Aiden's in front of him. Next she brought out some wooden sticks, then shakers and repeated above.

After introducing each instrument and its sound to Aiden, she went behind a chalkboard with her set of instruments, while all three of his were still in front of him. She would then play one of the instruments, without showing him, and prompt Aiden to identify the instrument by picking up the his instrument making the same noise. The first couple times around, she had to play the sound, show him which instrument the sound was coming from, then I'd guide him to pick his up and play it all while talking about how the sounds were the same.

He quickly picked up on this game. By the third round, my little monkey was LISTENING to each instrument sound (and pointing at his ear when he heard it) without seeing the object, was DETECTING what the sound was, then was IDENTIFYING and choosing the instrument to reproduce the same sound he just HEARD!

Another SIMPLY AMAZING moment on our journey to help Aiden hear.