Here’s the feel-good story of our training program in Ho Chi Minh City – just one amongst many, really.
There is a 3 year old boy whose family and therapist have traveled from Hanoi to spend the week in our workshop. The child has some language but was struggling in his therapy sessions early in the week. Our professionals were suspicious that the hearing aids were not working for him. We brought him to our Audiology program and one of the Global Foundation audiologists tested his hearing in the sound booth with the support of the Vietnamese participants. Sure enough, the test results showed that his hearing aids are not powerful enough for his hearing loss.
We had a high powered hearing aid on hand to loan out for a few days. We programmed the hearing aid for this child. We then sat the little boy up front of the lecture room and put the hearing aid on him….his eyes immediately got VERY big and he was just still as can be taking in the sounds around him that were made louder with the more powerful device. His mother called him from across the lecture hall. He heard her and was looking around trying to localize the sound. Everyone in the room was quiet, just watching this little guy take it all in with such happiness and wonder. It was one of those feel-good moments.
The boy and his family have been fully engaged in this week’s therapy sessions and their commitment is obvious. We are going to continue to support this family’s journey with their son through the Global Foundation’s video analysis program and in our Summer Training Program this July.
From a training program perspective, this has been a terrific opportunity to demonstrate to the Vietnamese participants that audiology and therapy need to go hand in hand for a child to benefit maximally from hearing technology and learn to listen and talk. The therapists need to know how a child is hearing and the audiologist needs to understand how a child’s language is progressing. If progress is not being made, they should be working together to address the problem. The case of this little boy was a perfect example of just that.