Walkie Talkies

Chance entered the living room engrossed in a conversation he was having with himself....at least that is what I thought when he first walked in. His head was pinched to one side and then I heard another voice coming from right where Chance was standing.

Chance had a walkie talkie and was communicating with a friend that was somewhere outside of the house. This intrigued me as I was curious as to how well Chance was hearing through a walkie talkie. My experience with walkie talkies has been one of strained hearing and muffled voices. At least if you are using the kid ones and the person is more than about 10 feet away.
I soon realized though, that Chance was hearing what was being said. He was making plans about where to meet his friend after he got a snack to share.

Wow. I never thought my little deaf son would be doing the oh so typical boy activity of talking on a walkie talkie! It was good see Chance just talking about boy things and making plans with his friends. It was even better to realize that Chance was hearing what was being said on his end of the walkie talkie.

I really like Chance's implants.

Chance needs quiet!

Chance loves math. This is the boy who would divide his M&M candies into colored piles before he would eat them when he was just tiny. This is the same boy who had a healthy competition going with a girl in his class as they competed to have the most 100 charts filled out in school.

Chance loves math and it is serious business when he is working out a math problem. Today as he sat at the table with his siblings doing math, he kept getting frustrated when anyone would make any noise as he figured out sums in his head.

"I HATE having to count over!" He bristled after someone had made noises.

Chance's siblings were actually not that loud. They were doing math themselves, but if they scrapped their chair on the floor, or made a comment to me, Chance would raise his head in frustration and say,"Shhhhhhhh!"

The math Chance is working on is adding large sums in his head and he is enjoying it, but he apparently wants complete peace and quiet while he is working:)

After a few minutes of Chance getting frustrated every time anyone made any noise, I unceremoniously took his implants off of his head and lay them on the table.

Chance looked confused for a moment and then he smiled, laughed and contentedly went back to his figuring.

"I wish I could do that." Chance's brother said looking enviously at Chance who was now totally engrossed in his math with out any distractions.

"Me too." Chance's sister chimed in.

I must add that I too wish that sometimes I could just shut the world off when the world got a little too loud or annoying.