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Looking Forward to 2012
by Shannon Garlitz, IDHV President
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Idaho Hands & Voices had a busy 2011. With the addition of four new board members last Spring, we were able to implement the rollout of a new website, begin a series of monthly family events in the Treasure Valley and recruit new members from all around the State. One particular highlight we were very excited about was the success of our First Annual Golf Scramble fundraiser.
The benefits received from the Scramble will allow us to approach 2012 with a whole new perspective ... money in the bank!
Thanks to the generosity of Idaho Sound Beginnings - EHDI offering a First Year FREE (FYF) family membership, we had 29 new families sign up last year. Twenty of those in the last three months! With the continuation of the FYF program and implementation of a renewal campaign, we are sure to grow our membership to new highs in 2012.
There will be an IDHV board meeting on Jan 18th to vote on our 2012 budget and to discuss a new Regional Activity Plan (RAP) for the year. Each regional will be allocated money based on membership numbers for family activities.
My family was able to travel to North Idaho this past November to connect with other families in Region 1 &
 | | Couer d' Alene Idaho, Nov 2011 |
2. Idaho Educational Services for the Deaf (IESDB) outreach consultants, Regina Ochs and Emily Donaldson, helped coordinate events. We had a great turnout and the kids, per the usual, had a blast! I hope to make it back up there at least once this year as well as over to Idaho Falls.
If you have a need for a family event or a parent meeting and don't see one on the calendar in your area, PLEASE let us know. Outreach and membership are two of our biggest goals for 2012. We'll be working on connecting with our parent consultants who
are located in each region of the state and develop Regional Activity Contacts (RAC) who will help coordinate regional activities. Even if you just want to talk one-on-one with another parent but don't know where to find one, we can help set that up!
Hands & Voices is far reaching. There are more than 40 chapters in and outside of the United States. The H&V National/International Leadership Conference will be held in Hood River, Oregon on June 22 - 24th this year. I can't stress enough what a WONDERFUL experience it is to gather, share stories, laugh and maybe even cry a little with parents of children with hearing loss from all different backgrounds, cultures, modes and methodolgy. It can be a very powerful two days out of a busy year to stop, reflect and rejoice about the decisions you've made for your child(ren) and learn more about what others are doing around the country.
Did you know Hood River is only about at six hour drive from Boise? Or an even faster airline flight from Spokane or Idaho Falls? Hood River also happens to be one of the most beautiful places in the world -- this coming from someone who stays in and around the Pacific Northwest as much as possible. But still, if you've never been ... it's a must see/experience type of place. We can help send you there! Let me know if you are interested in joining me and others from Idaho or want to learn more about an unforgettable experience at the H&V Conference.
If you can't tell, I am very excited for what 2012 is going to bring for our H&V chapter. As always, my family and I look forward to meeting new members and re-connecting with ones who are not old, but have been around awhile. |
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 It's that time of Year to
RENEW your Membership.
If you did not sign up for First Year Free (FYF) last year, you most likely need to renew.
Please visit our website and renew ASAP to ensure timely delivery of important information and to receive discounts on group activities.
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The Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is sponsoring a legislative breakfast Thursday, January 19, to acquaint legislators with the Council and the issues that are faced by persons who are deaf or hard of hearing. IDHV will be one of the organizations to have an exhibit table in the Capitol Rotunda that morning from 8:00 until noon.
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Visit our
for details of events
**Admission discounts for current
IDHV members**
Jan 21st Just Kid'n Around
Meridian, ID
11:00am
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Feb 11th
Valentine Party Jerome, ID 2pm ------------------------------ Feb 11th Jabbers Nampa, ID 10 ** Free admission for H&V members who RSVP ** ------------------------------ Feb 11th Foothills Learning Center Boise, ID 10am ------------------------------ Feb 18th Tubing at Bogus!! 11:00am **Must RSVP and pay $5 in advance** DON'T MISS THIS EVENT!! ------------------------------ Mar 10th Foothills Learning Center Boise, ID 10am Our website calendar is LOADED with information of activities & events for deaf/hh children and families around the state. If you have an activity you would like to add, please submit it through our website. |
COMING SOON ...
CSI & Magic Valley Transition Team's UNDER CONSTRUCTION: HIGH SCHOOL DAY Feb 29th 9:00am to 2:00pm Deadline for application submission: Feb 1st ------------------------ March 5 - 6 9:00am to 4:00pm Wallace, Idaho Coming to Boise in 2013
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SAVE THE DATE!!
Hood River, OR
This is a TERRIFIC opportunity for any parent or professional and it will be within "road trip" distance. Mark your calendar and start thinking about it now!
IDHV would like to send at least 3 parents to this conference
Contact:
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 | | Little H&V member in motion at Bodies In Motion |
H&V in Motion!
Treasure Valley H&V families were quite active during December, with a visit to Bodies in Motion, an ornament painting party and a trip to the Morrison Center to Hear A Play - A Christmas Carol. A further report of events from mother, Andrea Amestoy:
A small group of H&V members rendezvoused for some Christmas cheer over the holidays. We painted ornaments, sipped cider and snacked on treats while listening to Christmas music. The adults and children imbibed in good old fashioned conversation.
The children did some creative painting and we all realized how relaxing it was to recreate and paint. After we were finished decorating our ornaments, we headed over to the family reading series at the Morrison Center. There we took in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". True to tradition, old English was in use as the actors did a phenomenal job performing this classic. Afterwards, we were fortunate enough to get a picture with the class act actors. This proved to be a festive holiday activity. As 2012 presses on, I'm personally looking forward to it again next Christmas! We want to extend a special thank you to the staff at the Morrison Center for making sure our families were in seated the front row - a small gesture that makes the world of difference for our children's experience in the theatre. To view more pictures of these events, visit our Facebook page.
 | | H&V children with the actors of "A Christmas Carol" |
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Parents are Needed to Help EHDI and ISB Close the Gaps in Early Identification
Several Opportunities for PARENT Involvement
Idaho Sound Beginnings (ISB), Idaho's Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program (EHDI), is looking for parents of children with hearing loss throughout the state to be parent ambassadors and educators. - It may be hard to believe, but there are still hearing screening staff
 who believe that their job is to ensure all babies 'pass' the screening (so as not to worry parents) and there are health care providers who tell parents "not to worry", or "there isn't anything that can be done now anyway"!
- In 2010, 41 infants were diagnosed with hearing loss in the state of Idaho directly from newborn screening. At the same time, almost 400 other infants who "referred" never received audiologic testing. These are the babies that ISB works to find and help educate parents on the importance of follow-up testing.
Each year, ISB travels to various regions throughout the state to conduct training for hospital and midwife screening staff, early intervention personnel and physicians. They are looking for regional parents of children with hearing loss to participate in these in-services.
Valuable, parental input through personal experiences and stories has a profound and lasting impact on these healthcare providers. Having a parent at these training opportunities brings meaning, relevancy and real life experience to the newborn hearing screening they do on a daily basis.
If you are interested in helping, please consider sharing your story as a parent educator for ISB. Stipends are available to compensate travel costs and food. Contact Andrea Amestoy at 208-866-5180 if interested. To learn more about ISB, click here.
ISB is also seeking a parent representative to serve on the ISB-EHDI Advisory Board (quarterly meeting beginning Jan17, 2012 for approximately 2 hr per meeting). Contact Cynthia or Andrea for details. | |
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Go TELL it on a mountain!
By Andrea Amestoy, parent
and Amy Amy Hardy, MS, CCC-SLP, Clinical Assistant Professor at ISU
My four year old Ryder bounded out of the car and sped up the stairs with eager anticipation. Right behind him, I'm trying to keep up while schlepping my one year old Kylie. Was it an Elmo or Justin Beiber concert we were going to? No, it was TELL! Both Ryder and Kylie are hearing challenged (as I like to put it) and participated in the TELL program this past fall.
TELL or Toddler Early Language Learning is a fantastic program that we are so fortunate to have in the Treasure Valley. ~ Read more from Andrea about TELL HERE
Toddler Early Language Learning (TELL) group at Idaho State University (ISU) provides a high-quality program that offers children a structured preschool environment with directed and non-directed activities. This balanced program contains developmentally appropriate activities that foster speech/language skills, social-emotional, intellectual, and creative growth. Children are seen for group sessions and then seen individually by our supervised students clinicians. This preschool group focusses on children with cochlear implants, hearing impairments and speech/language delays.
~ Read more from Amy about TELL HERE
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Book Review
by Laura Bainbridge, Vice President IDHV
Listening Closely: A Journal to Bilateral Hearing
Arlene Romoff Arlene Romoff experienced progressive hearing loss as an adult, ultimately leading to deafness that hearing aids could no longer amplify enough for functional use. Her first book, Hear Again: Back to Life with a Cochlear Implant, highlighted her journey toward obtaining a cochlear implant. This, her second book, describes the struggles she faced when her single implant had an internal failure after 10 years of use.
Romoff journals the heartbreak of knowing her device had failed, the struggles associated with her weeks of returned silence, and the process of obtaining an internal component replacement. What evolves from this experience is her decision to go with bilateral implants.
The author shares her thought processes and personal pros/cons of going through an elective surgery to obtain this second implant. As a parent of a child with bilateral implants, it was easy to relate to the same decisional struggles, the questions, and the 'what ifs'. But what Romanoff does so well is highlight the slow progression of changes she experiences when given access to sound bilaterally. She is truly brought further into the hearing world again in both subtle and significant ways through the use of bilateral implants.
This is a great, quick read to gain insight into what one experiences with the implant/re-implant process. It has helped me re-appreciate the benefits of hearing bilaterally, which I often overlook. And it is reassuring from a parental aspect to hear an adult's perspective on the miracle of the cochlear implant. I recommend this book to those debating implantation for themselves or for a loved one.
To read other book reviews from IDHV members, click HERE. | |
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 Remembrances
by Mike and Andrea Amestoy, parents of two children with hearing loss
Oscar Wilde once said that "memory...is the diary we all carry about with us".
The Elks Hearing and Balance Center provided our family a fabulous opportunity to put these special memories into a book this past November. Our son, Ryder enjoyed a wonderful evening with Susie, Jennifer and Dad cutting out pictures to create his memory book.
Each of these books provided relevant and meaningful language immersion and experience starring our children! We walked away with some new and creative ideas to use with Ryder and Kylie as we strengthen and broaden their vocabulary. Ryder took advantage of his communication skills, skills that Susie, our Speech and Language Pathologist, has helped develop, by talking everybody's ears off. In the end, we had a wonderful evening together binding some memories while creating more.
Some ideas for other memory or experience book we would like to make include:
- Ryder's preschool at River Valley
- hiking in the Boise foothills
- grocery shopping at the store
- our neighborhood
- swimming at the pool
- bike riding on the Greenbelt
- relatives in Montana
- grandma's house
- doctor's office
- audiologist office and the staff that help him
- camping, hunting, boating and fishing
- Ryder's friends
- cooking and meals
- bath time
- Ling sounds (picture of kids with airplane, ghost, mouse, etc.)
- getting dressed and ready in the morning and getting ready for bed.
One of my favorite lyrics is from the song Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel that says "Time it was, and what a time it was, it was. A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph. Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."
These memory books are but a small way to encapsulate if only for a moment this sweet time in your child's life.
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More Memories: Glorious Reading Time
by Lorna Irwin, IDHV Secretary
The promised coming of "The Hobbit" to the big screen had our family remembering how Mom left Tolkien reeling in his grave after reading it aloud with on-the-fly simultaneous signed English translation (more later.) The hearing kid (now adult) who was subjected to this imperfect rendering remarked that "Reading time was glorious."
Reading time! That hour or so before bedtime when I read to my kids, everything from simple picture books to longer classic children's literature. For my deaf daughter, it was a chance to introduce new vocabulary, new concepts and information, as well as for entertainment. It was a means for me to learn new vocabulary, too; I'd do my homework ahead of time with a sign language dictionary and write tiny notes to myself (on post-it notes if the book was from the library, and once the book returned to the library, the post-it notes went up on the kitchen cupboards for review.) We've all heard or read about the myriad benefits of reading to children; there are also benefits for the parent, and more so for the parent whose child is deaf or hard of hearing. A simple children's book provides a script for practicing your own communication skills, whatever approach you are using with your child; it also gives you a chance to introduce modes of communication you may not use in daily conversation. Your child will ask for reruns of favorite books, so you'll get even more practice.
Some things I learned along the way: Preparation helps! Even for a straight read-aloud in your native language, being familiar with the story before you start enhances your rendition... and it helps to anticipate where you can stop and know that the kids will be able to fall asleep, but still be eager to find out what happens next. (Leave them at a real cliff-hanger, and they may be spotted reading the book for themselves. This is not a bad thing.)
Keep on reading as long as you can; don't stop when they are reading for themselves. They still enjoy it. (One week sometime after we'd finally ended nightly reading sessions, we had one of my daughter's classmates staying with us. She was visually-impaired and did not have with her any of her specialized equipment for reading, so I did what I could to alleviate boredom for her by reading a couple of books aloud. I noticed my hearing son sitting quietly behind my chair, listening to books I wouldn't have thought would be of the slightest interest to a ten-year-old boy.)
You never know what literature will appeal to your children, so read widely. It took me a long time to recognize that my daughter truly enjoyed non-fiction; an early clue was the "Eskimo village" (pile of scrap lumber) she erected in the back yard after a book about the far north. One of the biggest hits of my career in reading was The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks, which is just as silly as it sounds. I was ready to move on to something with more substance, but my kids demanded the sequel.
Make use of true-to-the-story film adaptations (captioned if possible!) of books, and books written to follow the film script (Disney is particularly good at this, putting out kids' books at more than one reading level.) I once used a pause button to sign the captions of an entire PBS kids' series to my just-beginning-to-read daughter.
And a final word about Tolkien: The first chapters were fine. Then we met the elves and the language got more complex, the sentence structure inverted, and the going got rough. We persevered until the end, whereupon Mom announced that both kids really ought to read this one for themselves as she'd made a total hash of it, and that there was a long sequel she wasn't even going to attempt. They both read their way back to the Lonely Mountain, then took the much longer journey to Mordor.
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The next issue of Wavelengths will appear in early March. Please send in stories, book reviews, helpful hints, whatever you have to share. To contact Lorna Irwin (editor) for any reason: niwri2@msn.com or (208) 324-7544. Ideas: "Fun Stuff to Do with Your Kids;" more preschool tales like the one Andrea submitted to this issue; tales of challenges met and triumphs experienced; humorous anecdotes.
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Idaho Hands & Voices
PO Box 9617 Boise ID 83707 |
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