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Words can’t describe a father’s love
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| Damon Kuhbacher signs “green” as he reads “Oliver Gets Hearing Aids” to his daughter, Lena. Lena started wearing hearing aids when she was 2 months old. More than a year ago, Lena switched from using hearing aids to only using her cochlear implant in her right ear. - News-Record photos by Sarah Voegele |
By MICHAEL JOHNSON, News-Record Writer mjohnson@gillettenewsrecord.net
amon Kuhbacher and his daughter, Lena, have a special relationship with M&Ms.Almost as fast as he can pull them out, she names the color.
Red. Yellow. Brown. Green. Orange.
He names the colors at the same time she does, fingers rapidly moving as the tongue speaks the sounds.
It is their special game, a sweet one between father and daughter, but also a significant one.
Together they are learning a new language —a 2-year-old whose ability to hear is as fragile as the implant in her ear and her 26-year-old father, who’s determined that he and his daughter will be able to talk regardless of the language they use.
Sending signals
Lena can hear, thanks to a cochlear implant.
The implant works by bypassing the cochlea and sending the electric signals directly to the auditory nerve. The implant allows her to hear conversations as quiet as 20 decibels, where the usual conversation is between 50 and 60 decibels.
It corrects a deafness that her parents discovered when she was just a month old and she failed her first hearing test.
Her mother, Sara, was understandably upset.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” Sara said.
She feared that Lena might fall behind in learning. She also feared not being able to fully communicate with her.
Damon shared those feelings, but wasn’t as fearful.
“I thought, if this is as bad as it gets, it ain’t so bad,” he said.
He grew up with two deaf cousins and knew that they learned to play and communicate with each other, even though the cousins didn’t learn sign language until they went to college.
When Lena was about 6 months old, she ans her parents began using rudimentary sign language together.
“Milk was pretty much her world then,” Sara said.
But soon after that, her life took a different turn.
Perfecting the language
Lena soon was enrolled into speech therapy sessions, which she attended twice a week to help her learn sign language and develop her verbal skills.
Most children Lena’s age can say maybe 50 words, says Suzie Eastman, her speech therapist. Lena can speak and sign more than 100.
Hearing news like that makes Damon feel good about their progress.
During one of their speech sessions, Eastman flips through a pile of flashcards containing pictures of animals, fruits and other common objects. Lena breezes through the objects, putting on a big grin for the sugar-filled pictures and frowning over some of the more healthy options.
Damon wanted to learn the language, too.
He didn’t want to go through life depending on verbal skills alone to communicate with his daughter. What if the implant failed?.
He found an American Sign Language class in Gillette that met once a week for a nine-week period starting in February.
He quickly learned the new language. So did Lena.
They practice together.
That’s how the M&M game began. It was an easy way to learn colors. Now, when he pulls out a bag of the candy, Lena starts rubbing her chest, signing “please.”
“Just seeing how much she learned, I think (sign language) would be very beneficial for anyone to learn,” Damon said.
Most of Lena’s lessons take place sitting on Damon’s lap or as Lena says, “Papa’s.”
In that position, on the living room floor, Damon pulls out a book filled with animals and other objects. Lena peers out at it, waiting for the next game to begin.
He points at different pictures including a big green tractor. Lena stares them down, one by one, trying to remember the names.
“What color’s that tractor?” he asks.
Damon signs green and Lena nods her head in agreement.
“What’s that?” he asks again, pointing at a duck.
Lena wants to look at other objects and Damon tries again.
“I can’t hear you, you have to use your words,” he says, still pointing at the duck.
Lena puts her hand to her mouth and pinches her thumb to her pointer finger, giving the sign for a duck.
“That’s right, good job,” he says.
After the games, the two take field trips around the family ranch, inspecting dad’s truck and spending time with the chickens in the backyard.
After exhausting her brain and body, Lena’s cochlear clip comes off for the first time since she woke up.
It’s nap time.
“That’s pretty much what we do all day,” Damon said with a smile.
Learning to listen
Communication between adults and 2-year-olds is never easy.
The frustration in not knowing what the other one wants is enough to stress out even the most patient person. Lena’s parents, now divorced, felt that stress from the beginning.
Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, according to the National Association of the Deaf. It is generally their hope to have a child just like them, able to hear and talk.
That’s what Damon and Sara wanted.
Watching the ease with which Damon and Lena communicate, it’s clear there is no disability.
Lena now works on full sentences and understanding verbs. With every added word she becomes more persuasive.
During Sunday morning church service several weeks ago, Lena was standing up on the pew just a few rows from the priest. Damon said to Lena using sign language, “Lena sit down now.”
Standing straight up she yelled back “Lena sit down now.”
“She’s been getting better at three-word sentences,” Damon said.
Damon says that he and Lena have a typical father-daughter relationship.
“I’m just happy I get to spend so much time with her,” he said.
It’s evident she likes to spend time with him, too — particularly when he has M&Ms.
Sound Advice
The Kubachers paid attention to deaf culture when making their decision to get a cochlear implant and teach Lena sign language. Experts at the National Association of the Deaf stress that deafness shouldn’t be viewed as a disability, but as another way to communicate.
The primary goal for hearing parents should be focusing on the whole child with early language development and cognitive development.
By simply putting the cochlear implant in place of visual communication, the child can have developmental delays which are difficult to reverse.
The cochlear implant
Lena has a magnetic clip that connects to her implant under her skin, a little bigger than a quarter, behind her right ear, that she can easily remove when she doesn’t want to hear anything anymore. The implant itself works by bypassing her cochlea and sending an electrical signal directly to her auditory nerve from an external microphone.
Cochlear implants have been available since the 1980s.
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