Children, parents, and professionals in partnership |
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Family Stories: Petra's Story
Starting from the basis that we wanted Petra to live a normal life, despite her disability, and somehow convinced that this might still be possible, we considered all the options. Most fortunately, we came across the Auditory-verbal approach, and through it we met Jacqueline Stokes. We became very concerned after a few months with a digital programmable hearing aid that Petra had still not said anything. She appeared to be able to hear us, but did not babble in the way that we would have considered normal . We had been advised to consider teaching her sign language, lip reading, and other methods of communicating. However, what we really wanted was for Petra to be able to hear and speak normally. We made an appointment to see Jacqueline and drove up to Oxford to see her, and within twenty minutes, our daughter was starting to babble again. We decided then and there that there was hope that Petra might be able to enjoy a “normal” childhood, and go to a local mainstream school as we had always imagined she would. It has been almost a year since that first meeting and Petra continues to make excellent progress. It has involved a lot of work for Virginia, who spends at least an hour every day with Petra in a structured speech therapy session, under Jacqueline's tutelage. But it has most definitely been worth it. Recent expressive and receptive tests confirm that Petra has caught up fast, and we have high hopes that this will continue.
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At the age of 11 months our daughter Petra spent four weeks in hospital recovering from a bad case of pneumococcal meningitis. Before we took her home from the hospital we were told that it was very likely that she would have some problems as a result of the disease. Within six months it became apparent that she was not hearing very well, and testing confirmed that she was profoundly deaf in one ear, and moderately to severely deaf in the other one. After the initial shock and the realization that Petra's hearing was not going to magically come back, we set about learning everything we could about her condition, and the various options available to her, developmentally.