Implant camp

Our family attended a local implant camp this year instead of the one in Colorado which we have attended in years past. It was the first year this camp was put on and they did a great job.

One of the best aspects of these camps is the way they include all of the kids in the family. Yes, you are there to learn about hearing loss related issues and because you have a child with an implant, but all of the kids feel like it is their camp. This is extremely important when you have a child who has required extra appointments etc. The care and attention needed to help a child with extra needs, affects all of the kids in the family in one way or another. These camps are a great marriage of learning for us parents and activities for the kids. All of the kids feel like it is "their camp" experience.

I love to gather with other parents of deaf and hard of hearing kids and learn about what we can do and what is happening with cochlear implants. There is always something that I take home with me to further Chance's journey to hear.

I really enjoy hearing from deaf adults and their experiences as they have been there. They are living a life with implants and are thus experts on the subject.

During one of the presentations, a bilateral implant user talked about using the telephone with an implant. If you did not know that this woman had implants, you would not guess that she was deaf. Her speech is incredible and she hears a lot of what is going on. Yet, she talked about how using the phone could be a challenge.

She gave an example of a friend that called and did the correct thing by first identifying herself. But then her friend went on about a recipe, but the woman with an implant had no idea what she was talking about. She had no context to help her. She finally had to tell her friend that she needed to clarify what she was talking about. She suggested the following example to help our deaf children better understand conversations on the telephone:

Caller:" Hi Jonny! This is grandpa. I'm calling about your visit to us next week."

Now Jonny has context. He knows what the conversation is about. I thought that was brilliant. Especially for kids who have had less life experience and less vocabulary to piece together the meaning of a conversation when they may not be hearing as well as they would like over the phone. This is something that would not have occurred to me, yet when I heard it, it made perfect sense. Telling the difference between a male and female voice is apparently a struggle for some implant users on the telephone. I learned some techniques that we can use to help Chance on the phone. We also learned about a product that we can buy from Cochlear (the manufacturer of Chance's implant), which helps implant users hone in on listening and deciphering sounds etc. It is made for people ages 10 to adult, but Chance will be there soon enough.

It is also great to be with parents who are going through the same experiences that you are. One of the subjects that came up was the impact having a deaf child has on other kids in the family. I don't think it is all negative impact or anything like that, but there is an impact. My kids have all spent more time in an audiologist's office than most senior citizens have. This has required them to be quiet and to basically hang out being quiet for a while sometimes while Chance has his hearing tested. My kids have also spent time on the road traveling to doctor appointments or audiologist appointments while their friends were all at home playing. We parents were talking about how having a child with hearing loss impacts the other kids in the family.

At one of the conferences I attended, a deaf man with several siblings said that his deafness was never talked about in the family. Wow. How do you avoid that for all of your growing up years? I guess people handle things in their own way.

One woman I heard from (not at this camp) talked about how in 13 years of having a deaf child, she and her husband never talked about their daughter being deaf. This just does not sound healthy to me.

The camp was a great success for our kids. They all loved it. We parents got to attend sessions on such subjects as "FM Systems"(one of those $3000.00 investments we will need to make to help Chance utilize his hearing in school and church and apparently in the van and other places adults have told us it helps in), "Music" and various therapy techniques to use to strengthen hearing in implant kids.

The kids were put in groups according to their age and had activities like touring a cheese factory, playing games and developing a puppet show which they performed for us on the last day of camp. They loved it.

There are some thing we can do to help Chance hone his listening skills. I am always grateful for more information and more ideas to help Chance strengthen his listening abilities.

Camp was a great success and the kids have already started talking about how they want to attend next year.

I am looking forward to next year as well.