One of the things us CI families have to come to terms with is, no matter how fantastically your child performs with their CI, the technology has limitations; after all, it is just technology. Remarkable as CIs are, the microphones, batteries and wires all have their own little bugs.

What we all have in common is that these limitations bring about predictable problems. One of these is vocabulary. CI children tend to be poorer at overhearing than other children. They don’t hear new words in context as well and hence their vocabulary can develop more slowly. Whilst a typical, hearing, child picks up new words from conversations they’re not even involved in, this can be more difficult for CI children. This isn’t a major problem. Alice’s language is above age appropriate; her use of language is fantastic (see how far we have come in four short years!) but she may not have a full Eskimo vocabulary of words for snow or understand colloquialisms as well as her friends. It’s a small problem, but one we are acutely aware of and we spend hours shoving new words her way. Reading has made a huge difference in this respect.

Alice swore for the first time today. I couldn’t be more thrilled.

She had overheard me shouting at a particularly noisy toy of Ollie’s (which was driving me particularly mad yesterday morning) and decided to demonstrate her new-found knowledge of expletives to the world. Hallelujah.

Every step is hard-fought, but every win feels oh so very special.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy a little video of Alice reading; we couldn’t be more proud of how far she has come and how well she is doing at school. For any families just starting on this journey, your dreams for your children are still possible and, just to warn you, they will swear too…