Lena's New Life

In less than eighteen months with us, Lena has developed almost five years of receptive English language, according to standardized criteria for deaf and hard-of-hearing children (the criteria on the SKI-HI standardized language tests used in her public school are higher for hearing children, even if testing is in ASL).  She arrived without even single words for things like eating, drinking, or going to the toilet, and now she can understand three- and four-step commands and follow long bedtime stories cued and read aloud to her word-for-word.  There are gaps, of course, since she doesn’t have the experience a nearly six-year-old child typically has.  But like most kindergartners she counts to twenty orally, recites the alphabet, and knows sounds for almost all the letters.  She can "sound out" (via a combination of cues, voice and internal language) many three-letter words phonetically, has a good beginning vocabulary of sight-words, and understands that we read sentences from left to right.  Expressively, she can cue-and-say things like “I want chocolate milk, please,” and although we would be hard pressed to understand her voice without the cues, her production of a wide array of speech sounds is improving week by week.  Recently, and with a little help, she's begun to write short sentences of her own composition as well.   With Cued Speech, she could easily have done this through the visual mode entirely, but now, with the cochlear implant, much of this can be prompted and accomplished through audition as well, if she chooses.  She does seem to prefer audition for many simple tasks, since it is not always convenient to stop what she's doing to watch.  (As for Dasha, her receptive and expressive language is very near age-appropriate, and we can't get her to stop talking.  Interestingly, her beginning phonics skills are not as strong as Lena's.  I believe this is because of Lena's skill with Cued Speech.)

Lena is in the second half of a regular, public school kindergarten curriculum, in a self-contained classroom of hard-of-hearing children learning to listen, lip-read, and speak.  She is the only Cued Speech child in her class, and the only one with a cochlear implant.  She has a Cued Speech transliterator who is with her wherever she goes at school, cueing what the teachers and other students say.  Sometimes Lena makes use of the transliterator, when she does not understand the language through listening and lip-reading alone, but sometimes she is able to understand simple spoken exchanges without the transliterator.  She seems to be intent on developing her auditory skills right now, and I am recently finding myself surprised at what she can understand, even when spoken in passing, or from another room.  She also knows a several signs, and understands them as a method of communication separate from cueing.  Soon, as part of an agreement between school districts, she will transfer to a program in a neighboring county, where the teachers and aids cue directly to the children.  This school shares the same curriculum as her present program, but there will be other cueing children, as well a hearing children, for her peers.  Many of the hearing children in this new school have learned to cue and do so frequently with their deaf classmates.

Will Lena continue to need the Cued Speech throughout her education?  That remains to be seen.  If she becomes a skilled enough listener and lip reader to understand her teachers when they use new vocabulary and explain unfamiliar topics, there may come a time when she doesn’t want to be different in the classroom any more.  Some of the professionals working with her are predicting she will eventually "outgrow" Cued Speech.  But on the other hand, it is likely that Cued Speech will always be easier for her to understand in the effortless way that hearing people understand spoken language, and that listening and lip reading only will continue to be more work, perhaps even exhausting for long periods of time with new material.  I feel confident, however, that Lena will almost certainly be able to read at the highest level she could have achieved even had she been born hearing.  Cued Speech children are typically voracious readers.  As for myself, I will keep cueing to Lena until she tells me to stop.

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