Perhaps this says it all

Below is a beautiful video from you tube, that I think really just says it all.What a wonderful dedication from his family to this young boy and all that have been part of their journey...enjoy.....

oh have the kleenex handy...

Yet more of the same

So after the excitement of day 2, it was on to more of the same for the rest of the week....

For me as his mother the things that most struck me were just what a successful young man he is becoming and how all those things I feared would never happen and was almost too scared to dream might happen for him when he was stuck down with meningitis, were there on show for me to see right in the here and now.

The laughter he shared about funny stories his co-work experience partner had shared with him about her upbrining and some of the funny stuff that happens on holidays.

How between them they decided that having just the two of them at work experience was great. They had each other to bounce ideas off of, yet not too many in a group that they wouldn't each get plenty of hands on practical stuff to do.

The fact they took turns typing up the report, obviously when he was typing, he would not have been looking at his co-work experience partner, yet was still able to hear what she was saying and get it down in the document they were doing on the computer.

Morning tea with the post-grad students of the department on Thursday. Having the confidence to join them for a coffee and some cake (his first cup of coffee I might add, and one he made with 2 spoons of coffee and some sugar; no wonder he was on top of the world!). He was able to talk to me about some of their projects and that Thursday morning was regular coffee and cake morning for the department.

I was waiting for his train at the station on Thursday night when an sms came through.

"My train is going to be late, stuck at Mitcham, signal failure. I will get to the station but it might be awhile".

I messaged back that I was at the station and would just wait there til he got there.

He was about 20 minutes late....and when he and I were driving home I realised, how like me he is in some ways. He, like me, is your glass half full kind of personality, always looking for the positive side of things.

As he walked from the train up the platform and we walked together to the car, I said to him "oh well at least you got to experience the highs and lows of public transport then"...he smiled and replied "Oh I didn't really mind, it wasn't that bad. At least it happened when I was on my way home, so it didn't really matter. If it had happened on the way in and I was late for work experience I would have been very disappointed." Yep finding the positive in what was possibly a negative situation.

Later I asked how he knew it was a signal failure..with his best eye rolling teen look of "what are you stupid?" look he told me that he heard the announcement on the loud speaker. He went on to tell me that this driver actually knew how to speak clearly because he could hear all the announcements of the station names and the signal failure announcements, unlike some of the other drivers. I know what he meant because I found it hard to understand them when we were on the dummy run the week before!

The week wrapped up with some time spent with the lecturer for the courses and the head of the department. It was an opportunity to ask any questions and find out more about the courses they were interested in. Again another person whose speech he was unfamiliar with and was unfamiliar with him and his hearing loss, again piece of cake!

He came home with some written notes and proceeded to ask me about the equivalence of the maths in the IB course compared to the maths in the SACE course because if he didn't get them both covered off in year 12, he would have to do a summer school course, and he wasn't doing that if he could help it!!

On the last day their supervisor was recounting stories of some of the students she supervised, some who were partnered with bossy partners who answered all the questions, took control over all the pracs and let their partner do nothing. Their supervisor then shared with them that A and his co-work experience partner were the best 2 students that she had worked with so far. She really liked how they worked as a team sharing the work, the answers, the practical write ups evenly between. It appears A and this young miss felt the same about their week together too. That they both had similar work ethics, often forgoing break times to get the experiment they were doing finished on time. They both contributed to everything they did and perhaps best of all they did it with hard work and humour. They both laughed a lot during their time together and had a brilliant experience in their work experience program. The Uni department concerned also earned many accolades for the amazing, structured program offered to them over the week.

For us as his parents. the end of the week was a really brilliant opportunity to look back at far we have come on this journey. To think back to this broken little boy we took home from the hospital after meningitis nearly took him from us. The fears we felt at that time, and then magnified ten fold more when we found out it had left him profoundly deaf.

In the place of that tiny broken toddler now stands this amazing 6'5" young man with the world at his feet. The confidence, the maturity, the speech and language, the positive attitude and the hard work ethic - really anything is possible. I wait and watch with wonder to see just what the future holds for my young man. I have already seen so much that he has achieved both personally and as an amazing role model for younger deaf kids and as a breaker of stereotypes for those that might place limitations on kids because of a hearing loss. Those that have the pleasure and perhaps even privilege of working with him, know only too well that hearing loss or not, anything is possible.

To this day many people will say to me "oh you and hubby have done a brilliant job with him and all the hard work you have put into him"....my response is always the same. I smile appreciatively and graciously accept their kind words and then remind them..." thanks for that, but really it has been up to him. We could have worked our arses off with him but if he didn't want this for himself, he would never be where he is today. This is his doing, his hard work and his determination that his deafness was never going to stop him from doing anything he set his mind to."

what a week!

Hmm it has been awhile since I have blogged here - didn't realise quite how long!

I know it was the case for me and I know speaking to parents of newly diagnosed babies it is the case for them too, when you find out your child has a hearing loss, all you want to know is that they are going to be ok!





I can remember all those worries as if they were yesterday, would he have friends, how would he cope as he got older etc etc etc.





Last week was such a wow week and has made me reflect back to those feelings at that time, and how far we have come since then.





Last week A has been on work experience week. He chose to do it at one of the Universities here in the school of Chemical & Pharmaceutical Engineering. The work experience program itself looked daunting, but for us as his parents all the rest of the stuff was just as daunting.





OK so he is a teen, and maybe we have protected him just a bit *smile* but for one reason or another, it hasn't happened that he has needed to travel on public transport on his own. Being able to head into the city every day while we were working meant that this was going to happen during work experience week - a somewhat scary thought for his parents!



That and coping with people he didn't know, expectations of him from people that didn't know him and had probably never dealt with a person with a cochlear implant!! Oh it made me want to wrap him a in a hug and keep him safe with me : - )



Of course it was never going to be like that! Of course he would go, it was an ideal time for him to grow, take on some new challenges - I mean for goodness sake he is old enough to get his "learners"!



So the last week of the school holidays, A and I did the dummy run on the train into the city, walked to the Uni and even met one of the people of the work experience program when we went to find the office he had to meet at the following Monday. It nearly killed the both of us being up early enough to catch the train just after 8am!



That Sunday night we chatted before he went to bed that he was a little nervous about the next day, not so much the train trip on his own for the first time but more so work experience and what it would be like.



Of course I made the mistake of opening my mouth and letting B know that - no he didn't tease him - read on to find out why that was a mistake!!



I didn't sleep well Sunday night - you know worrying is part of the mum job title! I kept dreaming that things happened and he was stranded in the city! I mean really he has a mobile and all the wonders of modern technology at his disposal - so why was I worrying???



Monday morning came, B and I headed off for school, hubby and A left for the train station. I had asked A to sms me when he arrived at the Uni just so I knew he arrived safe and sound. A short time later hubby called to say he had deposited A at the station and offered to let him sit in the car awhile, but A was having none of it, he was out on the platform ready to go.....so hubby drove off leaving the image of a lone soul at the station in his rear view mirror.



Then around 9am came the sms, he was there no worries, and of course I was under instructions to sms hubby when I knew that our "baby" was safe!



I had to be in the city that first afternoon for a meeting so I arranged to meet A at the Uni and drive him home - well I don't think he shut up the whole way home, except the momentary stop in order to draw breath.

First he started talking to me about a friend "Ben" on the train - I thought at first it was another school friend going to work experience that happened to catch the same train. Nope Ben was an arts student at the Uni, and apparently he had to make a mad dash sprint for the train because he was running late and nearly missed it - oh and that was because he had one of those mornings when you keep hitting the snooze button thinking to yourself "just 5 more minutes, just 5 more minutes" and next thing you know you are running late and have to sprint for the train.

Of course this information was gleaned in a mutual conversation on a moving, rumbling train with less than brilliant acoustics chatting to some guy he had never seen before, but who between the two of them, had struck up a conversation on the way into the city!

After we exhausted that subject it was on to the supervisor and the photos of the 2 dogs she had at her desk in the office. He was suggesting to me what breeds he thought they were but that he didn't get a chance to ask because there was so much work experience related stuff.

Then it was on to the student paired with him for work experience "Tatiana". He shared with me, what school she was from, some stuff about her parents, and her country of birth, the subjects she was doing at school blah blah blah blah...

Here was me worrying about how he might do dealing with people and what if he had trouble understanding them??? Trouble understanding them, sounds like he drove them nuts involving them in conversations all day!

Although I did ask about him and his haste to get out of the car in the morning at the station...."oh mum I love Dad, but he WAS DRIVING ME NUTS!.....asking me if I had this, had that, did I know this, know that....I couldn't stand it, I had to get out!

Oh and telling Master B of A's nervousness about day 1.....turns out I was not the only one that didn't sleep well..apparently he tossed and turned all night worrying about his big brother going on the train by himself for the first time and into the city and work experience and all that...what a beautiful soul my son has, his sensitivity and caring takes my breath away some days.

And that was just day 1 - I have 4 more days to post yet!