This past year I upgraded my cell phone and was left with my old phone. Not in good enough condition to sell, but not trash either. My husband and I decided to give it to Shelby, our deaf daughter. She is 8, almost 9, and we have been working on reading. We felt that the cell phone had two promising advantages. First, she would be able to communicate with family members that live far away.  She has a CI, but using the phone is still difficult for her and the recieving person. Now she can text message cell phones and email addresses. Second, this gave her exposure to words and motivation to read. It has been great!

I wanted to pass along this idea to others with struggling readers. We try not to use IM lingo when texting Shelby and help her formulate sentences. It is a great learning tool. It costs us about $20/month. It adds up, but well worth it! 

Shelby has been experiencing life without sound for the last few months. After chosing to give her speech processor a bath, it wasn't working very well. Our audiologist replaced the processor for us, but was unable to cover the broken coil. We haven't had the money to replace this part as of yet, so Shelby has had no sound.

As much as I would like Shelby to have sound, it is not a bad thing that she has been without either. Her signing skills have improved greatly and so have ours. She is learning what it means to be deaf. We do plan on getting her up and running again so that she will have that tool available to her, but it has been an interesting and challenging time for us.

So for our family, we appreciate that Shelby is deaf and glad that she is ok with that. We are also thankful that she has the capability of a cochlear implant and understands that it is a tool to help her and not something to depend on.

Teaching reading has taking on a new challenge without any sound. She tries very hard and is very motivated to read. She uses a lot of lip reading. In January we will be starting a new curriculum created for deaf children. I will be sharing how that works.