Listen and Talk

Ok, I'm pretty excited. We visited the Listen and Talk school and we LOVED it! First of all I thought it was located in Bothel, come to find out it's in North Seattle near the UW. Much much closer to us. Only 30 minutes in rush hour traffic. I got to see in person children with implants talking (without the deaf accent), singing, laughing. It was pretty amazing. It made me so excited for Marae. There are 6 classes in all with 6-9 kids in each. The children range from 3-5 in age. There is a teacher with her masters and assistant in each class so each child is getting a lot of attention. They focus a lot on literacy so children leave the school with extensive vocabulary. More so then most of their peers. There is an on sight audiologist who can problem shoot hearing aid/ implant technical difficulties. They have hearing testing booths and equipment. There are also several on sight speech pathologists who do auditory verbal therapy with each child individually. Kay loved the school and got to make a bee with some of the kids. There are also a few natural hearing children in the school as well. The tuition prices looked good so maybe Kay will attend preschool there 4 days a week next fall. This is something Luke and I will have to talk more about, but we hope to get Kay in preschool next Fall. I think Listen and Talk will give her an exceptional foundation before entering elementary school. I am so thankful we have such an awesome resource so close to us.

Our next big event for this week is Marae's appointment with the Hearing Loss clinic at Childrens hospital. We will be meeting with a surgeon, ENT Dr., Audiologist, speech pathologist, family counselor, and educational advisor. It will be a 4 hour long event Wednesday morning and THE appointment that will get things processing for Marae's Cochlear implant candidacy. We would appreciate prayers that this appointment would accomplish much.