It's been quite a while since I have updated this blog, and I apologize for that. But I wanted to share some really good news about Logan's progress with you. This morning, we had a preschool assessment with our school district to see where he is in comparison to typical hearing kids his own age. He will be turning 3 at the end of June, so he is aging out of Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) services through our school district and Easter Seals. Although he will be attending the preschool program at Sunshine Cottage School for Deaf Children beginning in August, we wanted to see what was available to him through our public school district.
At the beginning of this journey, we really had no idea what to expect. We didn't know where Logan would be when he was done with this first step in his journey and we didn't really even know the work that would be involved to help him get there. My hope was that we could at least close the language gap that was due to insufficient amplification during his first year of life and, if we were lucky, we could even catch him up with typical hearing kids his age by the time he turned 3.
I am so extremely proud to say that when he was first diagnosed with his profound hearing loss, I could never have imagined he would be doing so well by the time he aged out of ECI, but he has surpassed even my hopes for him. Logan has only been hearing sufficiently for 20 months, since the clock started for him when he had his cochlear implants activated when he was 13 months old. And although his current chronological age is 33 months, today his language was ranked receptively and expressively between 36 months and 42 months. And this is a comparison to typically hearing children, who have been hearing for all those months and in the womb! We were so excited and amazed that he was actually above average in all categories.
We have put in so much time, work and worry with him and I am so happy that we are seeing the fruits of our labor. But more importantly, I am so tremendously proud of my little boy because he has worked so hard too. He has had many moments of frustration and struggle, but he has overcome it and has caught up to where he needs to be.
And since he did so well, there were no services from the school district that are available to him, including the Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD), before he is school aged. So now we will focus on getting him started at Sunshine Cottage in the fall and will continue to work as hard as we have with him so that his language and listening continue to thrive.
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