Speech Therapy

People often comment on how well I speak.  I owe it to the dedication of my mom and speech therapy! I started speech therapy when I was 9 months old, and I continued to go after I got my cochlear implant.  It was called auditory verbal training.  It was up at Primary Children's one day a week and at the school for the deaf one day a week.  My mom was given assignments that she did with me as often as she could.  She tried to incorporate things we were doing at therapy as part of play time at home.  She was very dedicated and that made a huge difference.  She did everything the speech therapist told her to do and she made therapy part of every day life.   My mom says I really liked going to therapy which made it easier.  I went to Primary Children's until I was 5 years old.   I only did the speech therapy with the school for the deaf ages 2-4.  

After I got my cochlear implant, the speech therapist at Primary Children's told my mom that she should stop signing with me and focus only on hearing and speaking.  My mom didn't want to stop signing with me because that was how we'd been communicating.  And it seemed mean to take away a main of source of communication. It wasn't until the therapist saw how signing could help with the therapy that she stopped telling my mom to stop signing.  One day the speech therapist had animals lined up and then she would say an animal sound, and she wanted me to go get the animal.  I sat there confused, so my mom signed to me what the therapist wanted me to do.  I understood, and was able to do what she wanted.  The therapist was surprised that I was able to understand and she realized how signing could help during the therapy session.  After that she would always ask my mom to sign the directions.  After my speaking vocabulary was larger, we didn't need to sign anymore.  It was just helpful when I first got my cochlear implant.  

Here is a video of me at my speech therapy sessions.  You can see how important signing was to me.  I signed words like thank you, my turn, and baby.  


Emilee's Speech Therapy from Ben Cahoon on Vimeo.

I consider learning to hear and talk one of my biggest accomplishments.  I want to help deaf kids with cochlear implants, so I am thinking about going into speech therapy.  To prepare now, I am doing a speech therapy internship at an elementary school.  I am really enjoying it!  I think it would be neat to impact a child's life the way my speech therapists impacted mine. I'm very thankful to my mom and the therapists because they made a huge difference in my life.