Ben's journey into a hearing world.: Gilbert House

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Gilbert House

We went to the Gilbert House with Maddie and Auntie Sarah this weekend.

Ben tried milking a cow and picking vegetables.

We had fantastic tea party. Ben served us all "hot tea and moo moos (noodles)".

The grocery shopping was a hit.

He had his thinking tounge out as he filled his cart.

He loved checking out his groceries, but couldn't reach the cash register or scale.

Why does a place designed for children not have any stools?

We knew Ben would love the Bubble Room so we saved it for last.

He made a bubble wall

and almost stood still long enough to make a big bubble all the way around his body.

Addilyn enjoyed this room too!

The highlight of the Bubble Room, however, was the automatic sink

and the doo-dyer (blow dryer) on the wall.

Daddy had to pull him out kicking and screaming, "Doo-dyer. Doo-dyer."

And then he found

the

playground!

He went down every slide at least five times!

I had just read an article about the static from plastic slides wiping out the MAPs on kids implants. We hesitated for about 4 seconds and sent him on down. We have back ups for a reason :)

No problems and he had a blast!

Even all by himself!

This playground even had a truck for Ben to drive.
He said, "Ben driving. Wan ice cream cone."

So we went to get ice cream. A perfect way to end a fun day.

About that time Addilyn woke up.

3 comments:

Lone Star Family said...: That looks like so much fun! Ben is adorable!; February 15, 2011 at 4:36 PM
Anonymous said...: What a fun day with your family. Ben had a blast and Addilyn had a good nap. xxoo G & G; February 15, 2011 at 10:32 PM
Maddy said...: man, we could dump Elisabeth and Ben off in the bubble room, go to lunch and they probably wouldn't notice we were gone!!!; February 20, 2011 at 12:46 PM

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Ben's Words

“I'll try to make a visual picture that relates to the way sound is heard by a child with a cochlear implant. Suppose that you have to identify a four-legged animal, and you’ve not seen that animal before, but you have to figure out what it is. Maybe you have to draw it. Maybe you have to learn the name for it. Now, that animal is standing behind a bunch of trees. To see that animal, you have to look through tree trunks that are hiding big parts of that animal. Now, if you were looking through those trees with the equivalent of a hearing aid, you could probably only see the tail end of that animal, because you could only hear the low frequencies with that hearing aid. With a cochlear implant, though, you could see pieces of that animal’s head, pieces of its neck, its legs, its body, and pieces of its tail end, but you still would be missing pieces in between each of those that you could see. The reason I’m bringing this up for you to think about is because it’s important for us to realize that children who are using cochlear implants still don’t see the whole animal. They see more of a range of that animal, but they have to use their brains. They have to use what they already know about the world. They have to use their cognitive abilities to fill in those gaps to be able to put together a picture of that whole animal. That’s the kind of task that a child is facing using a cochlear implant.”
Dr. Patricia Spencer. Considerations for the Future: Putting It All Together, Presented at Cochlear Implants and Sign Language conference, April, 2002.