Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The big Indian wedding

Prisha dancing on stage
   We went to India on the 4th of December for an engagement and a wedding of 2 of Prisha's cousins. Well what a jam packed programme and what fun we had.Prisha enjoyed every bit of it.She danced and sang on the musical night and was dressed at her best in all the Indian attires.Thanks to her aunt Nisha who visited us, she was taken care of while I did all the things that needed my help.The 3 days of celebrations were something that she thoroughly enjoyed and participated in.She was the centre of attraction with all spirit and many reltives we have not seen in many years were very happy to hear her talk and respond to sounds like normal kids. We did loads of compliments and we did feel how much efforts have gone in to get her where she is with all sorts of wrong amplifications and advise in India from our audiologist, our job was tougher.
We did meet an ENT specialist and we were told how well she was talking and it was not there so with other kids.he did talk about CI and related issues and I would have loved to have detailed chat with him about it and about the conditions of speech therapy and lack of awareness etc in India, but time fell short.We were there just for 5 days and with all the celebrations, I missed on that.All in all a lovely trip!Posting some pictures of her.
    I have also noticed that Naida IX has been great for her but she may need more amplification as there are times she does not hear things and needs repetition.We heard her hearing aids and feel we need to increase her loudness for her to hear better.So we have an appointment tomorrow morning where she gets her new mold for the left ear {needed change again as sound was leaking}, lets see what changes and fine tuning are needed.She definitely has suffered long term due to bad amplification in India, we need to work harder on her speech .She is alright with regular day to day speech but finds it difficult to express anything new in her own words. She halts and her intonation is forceful and it worries me.She is very spirited and her speech therapist in school loves that fact that she takes all the corrections very well and never gives up.We need to find a good English speaking speech therapist outside the school too.Despite our efforts, we have not been able to find one here.Speech therapy in English is quite a weak area in Germany.So we have to work on her all by ourselves, following our instinct.She has made huge improvement in that last 4 months here but the graph has to be steeper still.We are not giving up but are working full force.Loads of reading ,writing, corrections and input in all ways possible.We are here at home for our winter break and so we hope to make the most of the 17 days and make sure that when she is back at school, she is more clear.The school too is finally realizing our efforts after their initial resistance to our working with her.By next June we definitely hope to see her at par with the curriculum {the IB curriculum was difficult for her to follow with its open ended style, where she had to express herself more}.Keeping our fingers crossed.
Riding the horse to the bride's home


2 comments:

  1. What beautiful pictures! I have never been to India, and I want to visit some day. What a gorgeous wedding! Congratulations to the bride and groom, and Prisha looks beautiful!

    You are so persistent- it must be hard to lack the speech therapy services. We do a lot with Nolan at home, but we are so grateful to have a speech therapist who can work with him on specific sounds (he has trouble with some /s/ sounds and also confuses a few other sounds).

    I am sure she will catch up with the school work- it sounds like the German schools have a tough curriculum!

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  2. Oh, you must visit India, its a lovely place to go and see the color,food and people everywhere.Yes it is tough when you have to keep fighting what you are not able to get.But isn't life all about this...never giving up?
    Prisha is responding very well with Naida to 's' sounds.Why don't you have a go at it?

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