#ling6

Because Ruby has now been officially diagnosed with a hearing loss, she qualifies for the Early Start Program.  This is an intervention program that helps pre-preschool aged infants and toddlers who have disabilities that might hinder their development.  You can read more about it here.  In Ruby’s case, the audiologist at UCLA referred us to the program.

Starting in August, a “teacher” from LAUSD came to our house to do our intake.  She asked a lot of questions regarding Ruby’s medical history as well as what our goals and/or worries are about her development.  I must say that it was kind of nice to talk to someone who wasn’t a doctor or audiologist about it all and to actually get it down on paper and help us “connect the dots”, so to speak.  We said we were most concerned about making sure Ruby hits all of her developmental milestones, especially regarding speech and language.  We don’t want her falling behind, and we want her to be ready for preschool (and then kindergarten) and hopefully be able to lead a “normal” life.  

The actual program teacher started with us in late August, which is the same time LAUSD started.  As of now, the teacher has only come one time as we’ve currently decided to have them come once per month (and her next visit is tomorrow!).  This can increase to a maximum of once a week if we feel it is necessary.  The original intake teacher as well as Ruby’s new teacher have all said that once a month should be fine unless we see Ruby starting to fall behind.  We’ll just have to monitor her closely and up the amount of times per month if we think she needs it.

So far, we’ve just gone through some of the basics of what we should be doing with Ruby at home to really stimulate speech and language learning… Most have to do with speaking a lot to her - singing songs, narrating everything, reading books, using facial expressions while speaking, and making the Ling 6 sounds, etc.  These are a "select" 6 sounds that represent a wide spectrum (audiologists can show you on an audiogram) that babies need to hear, imitate and discriminate in order to learn language and hear well (it also serves as a test to make sure hearing aids and cochlear implants are working).  Here are the sounds from low frequency to high:

/m/ /oo/ /ah/ /ee/ /sh/ /s/