On Their Own

The boys had a dentist appointment yesterday, and for the first time, they went back on their own, without parents.  This came as a surprise to me!  (A tiny preview of them going off to college!) It didn't bother the boys at all; they trotted right back and were very good with everything (even James, who has not been particularly cooperative on previous visits).  Yay, boys! 

They want us to start putting flouride on James's teeth since they have some weak spots (from being a preemie), but otherwise everything looked good. 

Today James was participating in a research study about kids with hearing loss, so he and I spent most of the day at the hospital (9:30-3, ugh!).  He was great!   He was really cooperative through all the testing, except he got a little tired of it right at the very end.  (And after that long, who can blame him?)

The first part was at audiology, and unfortunately, he still has some wax blocking up his left ear, so he's not hearing well at all out of that ear (fortunately the right ear is at his regular levels).  (Amazingly, they got us scheduled in to see the ear doctor tomorrow to take a look at that and hopefully help clear it out.  It was either that or the "next available" in mid-July!)

We didn't get any results from the testing today, but there were a number of the tests that James did really well on, including identifying letters (obviously -- he raced through that one!), and separating out sounds (so, "say 'team' without the 'm'").  I think it was one of the separating sounds tests that the experimenter commented that James was doing the best of any kid they'd tested in his age group.  (Go, James!)  There were others that he didn't seem to do quite so well on (the ones where they showed a picture and gave a little description: "Jimmy's mommy is going to the store. Jimmy wants to go, too.  What would he say to her?" were still hard for him - he did a lot of "I don't know" for those, even when he would know the response if it were a real situation.)  It was interesting to see informally from the tests this pattern of where the hearing loss seems to be creating some gaps in his knowledge or skills.  Of course, I don't know what's normal for his age group on these things, but there were a couple items here and there that I was a little surprised that he didn't get.  (A big issue for kids with hearing loss is that they don't overhear conversations as much as kids with normal hearing, so they miss out on that source of vocabulary, knowledge, etc. to some extent.) But, overall, I think he did a great job!

[The photo is from the other day when they wanted to find worms.  Mattie is holding up "his" worm.  If I'd gotten around to doing a blog post about that, I was going to title it, "I Pity the Worm" (say it in your best Mr. T voice).  Any bug that has the misfortune of crossing James's path has a rather sharply reduced chance of survival -- he's not exactly gentle with them!]