Making Meaningful Progress - 9 December 06

Today is a very special day for me and Fakhri. He has been working hard this past weeks learning to differentiate his early listening sounds. I am confident that he has understand a good deal of early listening sounds, but he has to prove it yet to his therapist !

I have proposed to his therapist San-San that I bring Fakhri toys from home for this session. I noticed that Fakhri is a bit reserved boy, he is holding himself to new people, new surrounding, and new toys ! I hope by using his toys in the therapy session he can gets comfortable and willing to open up himself just like at home with me.

San-san was very supportive and in fact she asked me to lead the session. So I starts by drawing Fakhri's attention to a box in my hand that contains 3 items - all animals. I make a sound... "Mooo", offer him the box and ask Fakhri to pick up the cow. Fakhri opens up the box and take out the cow! We tried several time again, each round with 3 animals, and then up to 4 animals, and Fakhri picked up the correct animals! We then moved to transportation toys such as airplane, train, bus, etc... and Fakhri do good as well. Following is 6 ling sounds - there was time where Fakhri has eyed the correct toys e.g Monkey for the "i...i..." sound I produce, but then his attention is drawn to a new toy in the box that he then choose that new toy... :)

After that, San San introduced her toys and match it up with Fakhri's toy. We hope next time Fakhri will like to play with this toys without hesitant.

We also sing "Topi saya bundar" and introduce "Wee..." by playing sliding toy with him. He looks very interested and at the end of the session he lean to San San ask her to hold him. Myself and San San put a mark on Fakhri receptive & expressive sounds. There are 19 receptive sounds (transportation, ling sounds, and transportation toy sounds) that Fakhri has understood including some of them are cat, cow, fish, horese, lam, monkey, pig, puppy, tiger, airplane, bus, car, train, cock, duck). Receptive sounds are still limited at this point he can produces "Aaaa" for airplane, "Brmmm" for car, "Mmmm" for foods.

It is 2 months post-implant, and Fakhri has seems to understand his name. He turn his head whenever he hears his name is called - and this is not coincidence, as he does not turn his head if we call him by another name. I thank God Allah SWT for all of this and pray that Fakhri will gets better and better in absorbing new lessons......