[Jenna599]

we took our 2 year old foster daughter to the dr this morning for a well baby exam, we ended up at the hospital near by with an audiologist who told us annie is compleatly deaf in her left ear and has a very limited amount of hearing in her right. this came as a suprise to us because in the 2 months that she has been with us her language has improved greatly (from 3 or 4 words to 20 or 30) . i was wondering if anyone has been in a simmiler situation, or is rasing a deaf or hearing impared child?

[crick]

I sent you a pm regarding the cochlear implant so hope that info helps a bit.

In response to this post, just based on my personal experience, language development is such an inconsistent thing with kids who have severe hearing loss.

I lost my hearing at 2 1/2 and it was only because I was already verbal that it was easier for me to pick up words and develop language skills. That may be the same for your daughter. In other words, if she wasn't born deaf, she already had some language development going on even if she wasn't speaking. And now with her being in an environment where you talk to her and work on things with her etc., she can pick it up.

Has the audiologist referred you to a speech therapist? I had speech therapy from 4 - 13 years of age and it was necessary for me in order to live a mostly normal life. My problem wasn't just learning new words, but understanding their meanings too. I also would develop words on my own for things that I didn't know the correct words for. So speech therapy helped with those things. Not just learning how to pronounce words correctly, but learning how to put sentences together, grammar, etc. those little things I didn't really understand when in school.

The speech therapist and audiologist should also be able to give you some things to do with your daughter to help her learn and accomodate for her hearing loss. If they don't, ask, and if they still aren't helpful, find someone else who will.

Crick