Building Communication Skills In Children With Cochlear Implant Recipients

For children who have received cochlear implant at a later stage of their life the rehab process in terms of language development and expansion would be different from the ones who have received the implant at a younger age.

For older children it is not just going to be language development but also other factors like their adolescent age and the sensitive issues attached with it also needs to be kept in mind.

Find out which activity on suits your child’s requirements best.

Progressive or sudden hearing loss after developing language skills at an age-appropriate level: The main task in this case is for your child to re-learn his/her auditory skills. Constant auditory stimulation is required.

Activities

• Practice listening to, and identifying words that sound similar for e.g. Fun and sun or bat and hat.
• Speech tracking or listening to a sentence being read and then repeating it back word-for-word.
• Auditory tracking or listening to some text being read and following along by pointing to the printed words as they’re said.
• Listening to music while reading along with the lyrics.
• Listening to audiobooks and reading the book at the same time.
• Reading a list of words loaded with the target sounds that your child is working on improving like /s/ or /r/.
• Have your child practice saying words, phrases or sentences with these target sounds and then give feedback on their pronunciation.

Uses a hearing aid before the cochlear implant, developed some language skills but not quiet at an age appropriate level: Here the goal is to improve his/her listening and spoken language level. If your child has had a significant delay you may need to add visual cues like speech reading, gestures and printed cues like pictures or books.

Activities

• Have your child write or say a series of numbers, dates or times that you have said.
• Have your child listen to a phrase or sentence and repeat it exactly as you said it.
• Say a list of words related to a topic and have your child repeat the words.
• What day of the week is August 15? September 21? and so on. Keep the calendar handy with you.

Minimal or no language development: The focus here has to be on building his or her functional and practical vocabulary.

Activities

• Make a communication book that lists vocabulary that’s meaningful, useful and important to your child. Have your child read through these lists and repeat back the printed words.
• Give simple, understandable and functional information or directions, like “Go take a bath”.Start by pairing these spoken words with visual cues and as your child starts to understand, then try speaking only.
• Practice simple speech sounds and then use a vocabulary that contains these sounds. Your goal is to help your child produce intelligible speech, so focus on words with easier sounds like “no,” “all done,” or “I want more” instead of slightly more difficult phrases like “May I have another one”.