Fakhri's 2nd Birthday

Today is Fakhri's 2nd Birthday, and his first year anniversary of hearing via cochlear implant device.

If we look back, precisely this time one year ago we were not sure whether we have make the right decision to implant Fakhri. And it proves out it was the best decision we ever made about Fakhri's future as we want him to become part of 'hearing & talking community'. We can understand if other parents are reluctant to do the implant, recognising the risks it carries and the fact that about 5% of recipients do not show any hearing improvements. However, we do encourage some of our friends who came to us and asks our opinions about cochlear implant to find out more about cochlear implant and that the benefit (of the implant) outweigh the risks, especially for those with children that are diagnosed with profound hearing loss.

But then implant without a persistent AV Therapy at home is nothing. I am so grateful that God smoothes the path for us, my company has been very supportive in giving me more time with Fakhri and to work flexibly from home, and we have hired the best nanny for Fakhri. Her name is Reni and he started directly when Fakhri came from Singapore (after his implant). Reni is very talkative and very passionate about applying AVT to Fakhri's everyday activity. She also proves up to be smart and can learn the principle of AVT I taught her. She always come with us to Fakhri's AVT session, and she usually gets nervous whenever the Therapist did some tests to check Fakhri's progress. The picture here shows Fakhri and his nanny (the one with headscarf).

I promised to post Fakhri's talk, I have not had chance to record him. Fakhri now has started to sing, and say 2 or 3 words in a sentence, We are all very excited........

New Words

It seems that every week Fakhri says a new word !

This week he starts saying "uuka" for "buka" (open), "cak" for "cicak" (some kind of small lizards that eats mosquitoes), "mamak" for "sama" (same), "mamah" when he is calling me, "ade" for little baby, "Ngak" for "Nggak" (no) and "Mau" for "I want that"

I'd like to put him on recording... to share with you all his progress. Let me find out how I can do that first...and i surely will post it !

First Words......

Hi everyone... it's been a while that I have not put news about Fakhri in this blog. It was quite a crazy busy life for me to juggle between works, business travelling, fakhri's therapy, and dealing with his older brother jealousy.

If we count from his first switch on, it has been 6 months Fakhri has access to his hearings (with his CI implant). His receptive language is developing very fast. He can now identify the toy by its name that includes train, cars, aeroplanes, bus, and all sorts of farm and wild animals (horse, cow, sheep, elephant, lion, snake, monkey), etc. He starts imitating the sound of each toys as he learned it through his AVT session e.g the cars goes "brrrmmmm" ... the monkey goes "e..e...e", etc. Most of time he name his toys with this sounds.

Fakhri also has develop some skill on imitating on demand. He starts imitating 6 ling sounds, he can do all 6, but his "u" sounds more like "mmm". His therapist says this is quite normal that some implanted kids perceived 'u' with 'm', and I read that along the time the kids can pronounce it correctly and not every kid has the same difficulty. Some has difficulty in pronouncing 'k' which is not the case with Fakhri. In addition, his 'sh' seems similar with 'sss'.

Just 3 weeks ago our family went to Pekanbaru in Riau Province to visit my younger sister who just delivered a baby girl - the first granddaughter for my parents. Fakhri was so excited. He talked/bables a lot! I have heard several times for the past couple of weeks Fakhri yell out my name as ...."Mah...." but in Pekanbaru he starts saying "Pak...Pak..." (Bapak = Father), and "Amang".... (Abang = Brother), "Ade" (kid/baby).

It seems that Fakhri is in the stage of labelling people (attaching face with name). It provides some sort of achievements when he calls out the person name like the above and the person gives response back.

His challenge is now in saying "u", for example if he says "bunga" (=flower), he says it (mmnga)... when he says "buka" (=open) he says "mmka". Also there are some words that he pronounced not really similar to what it sounds. And not everyone understands what he is trying to say at this moment, but we think it all takes time.

Our next target: Introducing Primary Colours.... Opposites adjectives..... (in and out, forward and backward, up and down, etc), and pick 2 toys out of 3 and put it in identified box.