She carefully crafted all of the items on her desk for me. Love it. So sweet and irreplaceable.
I am inspired to recall May from last year as part of throwback Thursday (#tbt), but wanted to ask permission....So, Mother, May I? Now someone is supposed to say, "Yes, you May." :)
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May is always a fun filled, commencement type of month for
moms and teachers, where we look back on the year and marvel at how fast it
has gone. We relish the achievements of
our children and we prepare elaborate end-of year celebrations. We parents and teachers might look a little
haggard by the end of the month because of all of the special running and doing to make
the end of the school year, but it is all worth it and our kids take special
memories with them into the summertime.
For our family, this time of year holds even more promise
and nostalgia because our daughter Ella celebrates many milestones in May and
June. Her fourth birthday is on June 5,
and in fact, her teacher designated today as her official “un-birthday” so that
she could bring in a special homemade confection to share with her
friends. Little does she know that next
kicks off the summer, but also a series of happy milestones for our girl.
You see, Ella received her first cochlear implant on
Memorial Day weekend 2010 when she was just one year old. I still remember the doubt that I felt right
before the surgery and the uncontrollable urge to escape and move to Mexico so
that she did not have to go through a voluntary surgery at such a young
age. I understood the controversy around
the procedure quite well and always wondered if I was doing the right thing for
her. Would she hate me when she is a
teenager because I made a such a big life decision for her so early on and
without her input? Would she come out of
the procedure safely? Would the implant
work for her? But, we trusted the caring
medical experts and the superhuman early interventionists who were surrounding
us. We also did our research in the
medical journals and in the Deaf community. Then, after careful consideration,
and a rude awakening that if we waited, the window of opportunity might close
for her, we took a leap of faith. We
opted for the implant so that Ella could hopefully have as many opportunities
as possible at her fingertips as she grew. Since the day we made that decision, I always
pictured myself responding to an irate teenager, if approached by her, with the
following:
I know you do not understand our choice, but
we did what we thought was best with the information we had at the time. We considered your safety, your health, your family
relationships, your schooling, your ability to read on time, your potential
friendships, your future career choices, your identity and your emotional well-
being. All of it. And still all roads let us to this option as
the best one for you. We felt confident
that with help from your early intervention program, we could be successful at stimulating
your little brain with spoken language through storybooks and conversation in
our home language. And when we moved forward with the surgery, we were already
seeing lots of evidence of that success in how social you were, how you loved
to tell us when you heard something with your high powered hearing aids and how
many words you were speaking before your first birthday. Yes, you were only a
baby, and we were worried that one day you would be upset with us for making
that choice for you. The bottom line is, we love you and accept you for who you
are. No matter what. So if you would
like to take off your implants, change schools and make sign language your
primary language, you absolutely have that choice. And because of our decision, if you choose to
stay in the hearing world, you have that option also. Regardless, we will
completely support you in any way that we possibly can. We are and always will be “all in” when it
comes to you.
With that plan for the future, we did it. We held hands and leapt as a family. And Ella
took off.
On June 17 this year, we will celebrate Ella’s three year
“hearing birthday”—the day she got her first implant activated and started
pointing to all of the voices and noises she was hearing in the audiologist’s
office. Lots of CI families celebrate
hearing birthdays and I love that tradition we have as a community.
A few days before activation, we had just celebrated her 1st
actual birthday where she was “in between” hearing devices. She had no hearing at all on that day, so we
taught the group of family and friends that came to her party to sign Happy Birthday
Song in ASL so that she would know we were singing to her. I remember her toothless smile and how she
played peek-a-boo with everyone using the paper table cloth to cover her
face. [First Birthday photo] Little did
I know that just 13 days later, she was going to be dancing to music that was
playing behind her. And 11 days after
that she be showing huge leaps in her receptive language and pre-lingual
speech.
It really took a whole series of these baby steps toward progress for us to
have some more confidence in our decision.
So, fast forward to May 2013. Another implant and a graduation from the
classroom experience at the Atlanta Speech School are two years and one year
behind us respectively. This May, Ella
is being promoted from her 3 year old mainstream classroom at a nearby private
school to the Pre-K class at the same school for next year. Her classroom teacher’s assessments show that
while she struggled a bit with classroom behavior (she is our little
firecracker), her academic skills are somewhere in the middle of the class of
her hearing peers. Even the social
emotional measurements of seeking help and asking appropriate questions and
making friends were all average for her age.
We were thrilled to see that she is even counting and identifying
letters of the alphabet better than some of her peers.
Earlier this week, her Auditory-Verbal Therapist/Speech
Language Pathologist gave her a certificate that read “Ella Madison Muse and
Family has completed Auditory Verbal Therapy at the Atlanta Speech
School.” Wow. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that
at only four years old, she would be where she is today. Emily gave us some additional goals to work
on at home, encouraged us to get in to see a private SLP next year for testing,
and recognized that most of her progress was since Christmas vacation. Probably because that is when we started using her FM system in the classroom.
But, as I look back on this year, I am amazed at Ella’s
progress. In December, she stood up in
our family room and recited the pledge of allegiance beginning to end with no
prompting from us.
We were so shocked! Up until then, we wondered how she was faring
in her new classroom with 16 kids…was she picking up routines and did she
understand instructions? Seeing her
perform a mini-speech that all children learn eventually, but she was doing at
3 and a half, amazed us! She knew something that we did not personally
teach or coach her to do. She learned it
from listening in her environment, from taking in the words on a daily basis
and reciting it with her friends every morning. It brought tears to our eyes
and pride to her heart and I will never forget that moment.
Today, when I took Ella’s “un-birthday” treat (tea party
cupcakes made to look like little tea cups) [photo of cupcake] to her classroom
she ran over to me, gave me a big hug, then quickly ran back to the circle of
children to complete her group activity on the five senses.
“Can we hear popcorn?”, her teacher asked. “YES!”, Ella said with the rest of the class
and circled the ear on her paper with a purple marker.
At snack time, she waited patiently until the class finished
singing “Happy Un-birthday” to her and then without missing a beat, she blew
out her candle. One of her best friends
said “Ella, you forgot to make a
wish!” She squeezed her eyes shut and
said, “I wish for ice cream.” The class
laughed in unison.
On my way out the door, Ella’s teacher said, “I want to show
you this.”
It was a portrait that Ella drew of herself back in
September. All in purple crayon—it looked
like a lot of scribble with no intentionality.
It looked nothing like a self-portrait.
I remembered back to how her fine motor skills were lagging at the
beginning of the year and I cringed slightly on the inside thinking that maybe
I had gone wrong by not making sure she knew how to draw stick figures by the
time she started school this year.
Then, the teacher flipped that sheet of paper over to reveal
another piece of paper stapled to the back of it. It said “Ella. Self Portrait, May 2013”. It had shape. And form. And her strawberry blonde hair. And her big blue
eyes. She was smiling. In one school
year, her identity was already taking shape on the page. I quietly cheered for
the progress she had made toward writing by learning to control the crayon,
planning in advance of putting the crayon to paper, and thinking through
details as she worked through the drawing.
It was totally age appropriate. I
tried not to let my glistening eyes spill over.
I’m so grateful for May.
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