Collin's Graduates From Kindergarten

Friday morning marked the first major milestone in Collin's "Quest for Education". Yes, the completion of Kindergarten is never to be taken lightly. For Collin it truly is a great achievement. Most of you know the problems he had with his hearing and speech. If not, I'll give the short version. When he was around three we took him to the pediatrician because we were concerned that he wasn't talking yet, and if he did it was impossible to understand him. This of course ended up in great frustration for him and for us. They referred us to an audiologist who after a doing several intense tests told us that he was only hearing about 20% and needed to have hearing aids. As a last resort they sent us to an ENT, who said that there was a small amount of fluid in his ears, not enough to affect his hearing, but they wanted to put tubes in anyway. After surgery the doctor told us that he had never seen so much fluid on a child's ear. It was packed in so tightly that they couldn't detect the movement when they did the tests. This almost completely corrected his hearing, there are still a few decibels that he can't hear, but within normal range. This whole hearing thing affected him in so many ways. He started out in the Early Intervention Program where he was diagnosed with several different disorders, put in Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy. When he turned four he started Speech Therapy through the public school system in our area, we took him three days a week. After that he attended a special pre-school where he had very intense therapy five days a week for a year an a half. The therapist described it to me like this. "Imagine learning a new language by cassette tape, only with lots of static and other background noise". This very much explained why he sounded like he was speaking a different language that us. We are so pleased with his progress, he stills struggles with phonics some, but is doing wonderful in every other area. His therapist told me that she thinks after next school year we will be able to discontinue his therapy. So here are a few pictures of the big day, along with a video of his solo. Sorry that I didn't get the whole song. I was so intrigued that I forgot to start videoing.


The whole class

With his favorite gal, Janessa

Everyone who new Harold when he was little always tells me that Collin is his replica. After looking back at old pictures I discovered that it is really true. Here is Harold at the same age.

Collin's picture from this year


Together


The whole family, not sure what Ethan's doing.

"God's Little People"