Tom has found his singing voice. He chose his own improvisational microphone too, somehow innately understanding what would best serve. This is only one of a number of odd nuggets of understanding that Tom appears to have been born with, the most noticeable of which is his grasp that putting a box on your head is always funny.
There are no box-on-head moments in this clip. Just singing.
Dance To The Music from Jason B and Vimeo.
Showing posts with label singing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label singing. Show all posts
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Nagging doubts put to rest
Cochlear implants and music appreciation is an interesting sub-topic and one that has given us some cause for thought. With so much of pre-school and early school years featuring action songs and the learning of rhymes, we feared Tom's hearing would be a significant barrier to participation. In the paranoid parents' brain I foresaw a dispondent son standing on the edge of a circle while all around him his peers Dingle Dangled their Scarecrows and Wound their Bobbins Up.
Michael Chorost, in his article 'My Bionic Quest for Bolero', addresses the issue in an engaging manner without skirting round the science of it. The limitations of the 'channels' of sound offered by implants makes distinguishing between note close together on the scale impossible. There is promise of more with Advanced Bionic's HiRes 120 Strategy .
We aren't quite at that level of need yet. The 16 channels (well, 15 in the left ear) that Tom is getting seem to be more than sufficent for him to get the tune, the all-important actions, most of the lyrics and a huge smile on his face.
As for the other nagging doubt - to explain it I have to admit, in a slightly guilty middle-class parent way, that Tom likes a bit of TV every once in a while but I've always had the impression that Tom wasn't really understanding much of what he heard. The quality of the sound is different to natural voices and there aren't always visual cues to aid understanding so I assumed it was just the bright colours and rapid movement that was holding his slack-jawed attention.
Watching Tom at AV therapy yesterday allayed this fear and much more besides. I watched most of the session with tears in my eyes; I was so moved by what Tom could do. It was such a simple exercise (as is so much of what we learn with the marvel that is Jacqueline Stokes). Jacqueline played an audio story on an old style mono cassette recorder which Tom and she followed with the book proper, stopping frequently to talk about what was heard and how it related to the story.
Tom was utterly inthralled; attentive, excited and hearing everything. He didn't miss a trick and, when the story was finished he wanted to plough on into the next one. The story held his attention for upwards of 20 or 30 minutes and then, with very little encouragement, he proceeded to recreate the story with toys for another half an hour.
Just to make anyone aware who's joining this story at this point (and remind the rest of you); Tom is deaf, relying on cochlear implants... and he's not quite three years old.
He is loving sound - he's also learning words that we haven't taught him (this is where it starts to get dangerous) and experimenting with the language he's learnt. His progress is such that we've scaled down to once every two months with Jacqueline. There's the transition to school to manage but I'm beginning to suspect that Tom won't be the quiet one on the edge of the circle - he'll be the irrepressible one that the teacher needs to shut up.
Michael Chorost, in his article 'My Bionic Quest for Bolero', addresses the issue in an engaging manner without skirting round the science of it. The limitations of the 'channels' of sound offered by implants makes distinguishing between note close together on the scale impossible. There is promise of more with Advanced Bionic's HiRes 120 Strategy .
We aren't quite at that level of need yet. The 16 channels (well, 15 in the left ear) that Tom is getting seem to be more than sufficent for him to get the tune, the all-important actions, most of the lyrics and a huge smile on his face.
As for the other nagging doubt - to explain it I have to admit, in a slightly guilty middle-class parent way, that Tom likes a bit of TV every once in a while but I've always had the impression that Tom wasn't really understanding much of what he heard. The quality of the sound is different to natural voices and there aren't always visual cues to aid understanding so I assumed it was just the bright colours and rapid movement that was holding his slack-jawed attention.
Watching Tom at AV therapy yesterday allayed this fear and much more besides. I watched most of the session with tears in my eyes; I was so moved by what Tom could do. It was such a simple exercise (as is so much of what we learn with the marvel that is Jacqueline Stokes). Jacqueline played an audio story on an old style mono cassette recorder which Tom and she followed with the book proper, stopping frequently to talk about what was heard and how it related to the story.
Tom was utterly inthralled; attentive, excited and hearing everything. He didn't miss a trick and, when the story was finished he wanted to plough on into the next one. The story held his attention for upwards of 20 or 30 minutes and then, with very little encouragement, he proceeded to recreate the story with toys for another half an hour.
Just to make anyone aware who's joining this story at this point (and remind the rest of you); Tom is deaf, relying on cochlear implants... and he's not quite three years old.
He is loving sound - he's also learning words that we haven't taught him (this is where it starts to get dangerous) and experimenting with the language he's learnt. His progress is such that we've scaled down to once every two months with Jacqueline. There's the transition to school to manage but I'm beginning to suspect that Tom won't be the quiet one on the edge of the circle - he'll be the irrepressible one that the teacher needs to shut up.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
'Baa Baa Black Sheep, Daddy Shut Your Eyes!'
I thought kids were supposed to grow up when you weren't looking? We've just had a week or two of wholesome family togetherness on holiday (mostly in the Ardeche region of southern France, thanks for asking) where Tom has been constantly with us; spoilt to within an inch of bratdom and in sight continuously. Scrutinised, in fact - his actions dissected and analysed by a panel of judges. Then we come home and Tom returns to his usual routine a changed boy.
Karen, Tom's childminder, has always described him as 'a watcher'. While the other kids at playgroup charge off and throw themselves into activities Tom would hang back, see what they got up to and then quietly select his moment to act. Often this would involve seizing his favourite pedal car or staying close to the grown ups, whiling away his time in blissful solitude. I've always got that about him. I was that kid once.
This week, though, something has changed. Monday found Tom joining in with the dancing and singing at Tumbletots; something he's studiously avoided in the past. He even deigned to join 'the train' - a conga chain that forms to migrate the tots from one activity to the next. In the past Tom has demonstrated some serious 'personal space' issues at the very suggestion that he may allow another child to hold his hips. On Monday, however, off he toddled.
On Wednesday Karen reported that Tom had launched himself into a softplay area - one of those multi-tiered cage things with slides, giant mangles and holes that were designed to humiliate fathers who aren't as flexible or lithe as they once were. This is another first; up 'til now Nik, Karen or I have been dragged into these squishy, claustrophobic hell-zones where four year olds climb the netting and body slam you in the ball pit. I don't think I'll miss that particular pleasure but I do wonder where these things were when I was a kid (Cue extended wistful reminiscences about the golden age of childhood when you played outside, climbed trees, fell in streams etc. etc.).
A confidence has emerged that has caught us by surprise and we love it.
A year ago today we brought Tom home from hospital. Again. That was the beginning of the journey back to sound - his first cochlear implant. He hadn't started walking again and had been out of hospital less than a month but photos of that time show him smiling, playing and blissfully unaffected by the turmoil that we were going through.
How things move on.
This morning Tom sang 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' to me while I pretended to go to sleep in his bed. He has 'Twinkle, Twinkle' down pat while 'Baa, Baa Black Sheep' sounds like a stuck record. He gets jammed on the first line and needs a small vocal nudge to get him off the first line.
This morning it went:
'Baa Baa Black Sheep,
Daddy Shut Your Eyes!,
Have you any wool?
Baa Baa Black Sheep...'
That's my rather long-winded way of saying 'Sorry for the lack of updates - Tom is in astonishing form'
Karen, Tom's childminder, has always described him as 'a watcher'. While the other kids at playgroup charge off and throw themselves into activities Tom would hang back, see what they got up to and then quietly select his moment to act. Often this would involve seizing his favourite pedal car or staying close to the grown ups, whiling away his time in blissful solitude. I've always got that about him. I was that kid once.
This week, though, something has changed. Monday found Tom joining in with the dancing and singing at Tumbletots; something he's studiously avoided in the past. He even deigned to join 'the train' - a conga chain that forms to migrate the tots from one activity to the next. In the past Tom has demonstrated some serious 'personal space' issues at the very suggestion that he may allow another child to hold his hips. On Monday, however, off he toddled.
On Wednesday Karen reported that Tom had launched himself into a softplay area - one of those multi-tiered cage things with slides, giant mangles and holes that were designed to humiliate fathers who aren't as flexible or lithe as they once were. This is another first; up 'til now Nik, Karen or I have been dragged into these squishy, claustrophobic hell-zones where four year olds climb the netting and body slam you in the ball pit. I don't think I'll miss that particular pleasure but I do wonder where these things were when I was a kid (Cue extended wistful reminiscences about the golden age of childhood when you played outside, climbed trees, fell in streams etc. etc.).
A confidence has emerged that has caught us by surprise and we love it.
A year ago today we brought Tom home from hospital. Again. That was the beginning of the journey back to sound - his first cochlear implant. He hadn't started walking again and had been out of hospital less than a month but photos of that time show him smiling, playing and blissfully unaffected by the turmoil that we were going through.
How things move on.
This morning Tom sang 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' to me while I pretended to go to sleep in his bed. He has 'Twinkle, Twinkle' down pat while 'Baa, Baa Black Sheep' sounds like a stuck record. He gets jammed on the first line and needs a small vocal nudge to get him off the first line.
This morning it went:
'Baa Baa Black Sheep,
Daddy Shut Your Eyes!,
Have you any wool?
Baa Baa Black Sheep...'
That's my rather long-winded way of saying 'Sorry for the lack of updates - Tom is in astonishing form'
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