A small break through and victory

     I have been in touch with a mother of a little girl who reached out to me after seeing the blog. Guiding her as much as I can in this very difficult journey of developing speech and language. Her daughter has loss in high frequency and had good decent speech in Hindi. Clarity needed to taken care of. She couldn't hear many things around her. The parents were desperate. 

      Having given her initial advise her hunt for audiologist started. She located one through a source I knew. She is a leading AVT specialist in Mumbai with all cochlear implanted kids. Which is a surprise in itself. How can no child benefit from hearing aids?? 

     With lot of pressures for CI, the mother stuck to hearing aids. We supported her the best we could. Her hearing aids were under programmed, speech therapy was nothing to take back home and pressures were built up constantly to switch to CI. The family was very hassled. They knew they were in wrong place but as there was no option of any other they stuck to her. Expensive hourly forced lessons on so called speech therapy, badly programmed aids and wrong services the family was breaking down often. The mother showed her examples of our kids where all talk with hearing aids and good speech therapy. But the lady would refuse any such claims and give all kinds of reasoning and dismal picture of the child's future. Meanwhile we supported them since we knew she just needed well programmed hearing aids. 

     Soon they found another audiologist company in Mumbai which is a chain. They believe in giving the right advise and open programming of aids to parents. They helped them and programmed the aids well. They even opened up the program to show them what the child is hearing..which no audiologist is doing at present there. The family saw immediate responses in the child. She was responding to sounds she never did earlier! Has the hearing suddenly changed? They were under programmed so that the child never heard and family will opt of CI. The strategy is plain and simple. As soon she came to know iof this she called them up to make amends. Her reputation was at stake!! She knew she was caught and agreed her "speech therapy "didn't help and her audiologist " made mistakes" in programming !! We asked for all the money back they spent on programming hearing aids and the speech therapy.  She agreed to return all the money !!! 

Today the child is speaking without the need for cochlear implants !! All claims made by her, all fears put into the parents were put to rest. She is improving every day. She hears well and children follow the speech therapy given by Alaka ma'am. The family listens to our speech therapy videos each day and are so happy !! They look forward to a brighter tomorrow.  

     I wish these people stopped misguiding families with deaf kids. They already are so burdened! Today the family has the support of Alaka ma'am, Hearing plus and us. There is no way the child will not lead a normal integrated life. Had they not met us ... The child's residual hearing would have been lost, lakhs of Rs spent on a not needed hearing aid would have been done and through that speech therapy how much the child would have progressed is anyone's guess. The lady speech therapist does shame to her profession!! We know her truth and hoping soon many more would. Till then we shall keep raising these issues and putting such people down. May the deaf kids be given what is their right.... Good hearing aids, speech therapy , spoken language and integration into normal life of speech and language!!