This past week, Ocoee visited the Clarke School in Jacksonville-- a special place for children who are hard of hearing. They hold school for ages 2-7, and Ocoee got to join in for several hours one day. All of the instruction was designed with listening in mind. It ws awesome to watch her, and we met some amazing families in the meantime. She participated beautifully, and we learned a lot.
Perhaps the best thing that happened was an evaluation with a certified auditory-verbal therapist. She was able to show/tell us that Ocoee is still in the "detection" phase of listening. She responds very consistently to environmental sounds but is not as tuned in to voice. We were able to outline a lesson plan for therapy sessions to do at home with her every day. Although we are headed in the right direction, we learned that we need to focus on helping her pay attenion to voices. We learned step-by-step how to teach her to make a conditioned response to voice (also very helpful to the audiologist), and how to encourage her to vocalize using the "Ling 6" sounds of "ah, ee, oo, sh, s, and m". There are many other ways to encourage vocalization as well, from playtime to reading books to narrating what is going on around her. We are also focusing on "power vocabulary"-- words like "I want, more, up/down, open/close, push/pull, etc."
The most exciting news we have is that it is TIME FOR OCOEE'S SECOND SURGERY! The date is scheduled for Tuesday July 28th. A HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped make this possible and who continues to pour love, prayers, and support into our lives.
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