Moog Summer Workshop

During the last day of my Cochlear training in Denver last month, I was talking with one of the parents in attendance and he was telling me about a workshop at the Moog Center, one of the best oral deaf schools in the country, in St. Louis that his family attended a few years ago when his son was around Logan's age.  The workshop taught them so much and did so much for his son that his family decided to move there!  I had heard many good things about this school before so I made a mental note to check when the workshop would be taking place this summer.

I got home in the evening and after I spent some time with the kids and got them into bed, I got out my laptop to look into the workshop.  This was a Sunday evening and it turned out that the workshop was starting on that Tuesday.  I went ahead and emailed the director to find out if there was another summer session (which there wasn't) and she emailed me back right away and said I could call her to talk more since she was in the office (at 11 pm). Of course, I immediately called her and, from what she described, the program sounded like it would be great information for us and good practice for Logan.

After talking with Andrew at length we decided to pack up the kids and make the drive.  We are fortunate that he works from home so his office is his backpack. He would be able to work while I did the driving.  We left the house on Monday afternoon to make the 14 hour drive to St. Louis, stayed in Oklahoma City and made it there at 6 pm on Tuesday, just in time for the welcome dinner.

The next morning, we dropped the kids off in their classrooms and went to our session.  They started off with a really interesting and eye opening language simulation with the goal of having the parents experience what it is like to be expected to understand a language they do not know.  The instructor came in and told each of us our name in this new language and we had to repeat it. Then, she would name things around the room (light, floor, book, etc) and have us repeat it over and over. A couple of times, she even acted upset if we couldn't name something correctly or didn't remember it.  It really illustrated how hard it is for a child learning a language.  And especially for a child with hearing loss who has a much more difficult time understanding and acquiring language.

Everyday while we were in our session, Logan had an hour of one on one time with a speech therapist who evaluated how he is doing.  She spent time going through their list of 100 first words to see if he could identify the object she named or say it. Not surprisingly, he was able to identify most of them but would not say them.  He is very stubborn and we have had many problems getting him to repeat words, which is one of the reasons I was so interested in attending this workshop.  I wanted to get another perspective on how we should approach Logan's language acquisition.

We had two opportunities during the workshop to be observed by a teacher at the Moog and to be given pointers on how to implement their "modeling and imitation" strategy.  During these exercises, we had Logan in a booster chair and gave him a couple of choices, such as a choice between two snacks. When he pointed to what he wanted, we would model the word and expect him to repeat or, at the very least, approximate the word.  We would not give him what he wanted until he complied.  I know this sounds so simple as I write it out, but we had tried this before with little success. I think what we learned was that we can push him to that limit and he will eventually understand that he will not just get his way. Believe me, we had many conversations with his teachers over the last few months on what was the appropriate approach for him.  Also, the idea with the Moog technique is that you continually set the bar higher. For example, when he is saying one word utterances with ease, we need to expect him to say two word utterances (from "cookie" to "more cookie").  I think this has been another problem area for us. We just get so excited that he is saying something that we forget to push him to say more!

While we were there, we had the opportunity to meet up with the family that I met in Denver during the Cochlear Ambassador training.  It was so amazing to see how well their four year old son is doing with his speech and just to talk to them about their journey in the cochlear implant world with him. Also, Jasmine adored playing with him, so that was a plus.

It has been a month since we made that trip to St. Louis and I am happy to say that in that month Logan has progressed quite well.  He now understands that he is expected to vocalize and does so regularly.  So much so that his teachers have commented on how he is saying a lot more now.  He is now attempting to repeat so many more words just by us asking him to. But what I am really happy about is that he is even trying to say phrases.  Just the other day he pointed to his sister's cup and said "that's Jasmine's cup."

I am so thankful that we were told about the workshop and that we were able to attend on such short notice. Although we are not planning to move to St. Louis to attend the Moog Center since we have great services here as well, I am happy we got to see another perspective on teaching Logan speech that has been so effective so far.