I think I'll side with the Speech Teacher on this one!

Today a Speech Teacher came to visit and do her evaluations on Seth. She is very nice and will be a lot of fun to have around helping to teach us to communicate with Seth. How we'll communicate with Seth is still up in the air as we need to figure out if he's really hearing us or not. His last ABR showed that he has severe to profound hearing loss. With his hearing aids, he'll be able to hear some speech, but not all as hearing aids can only amplify so much. Here's the very encouraging news. She listened to Seth's hearing aids and thought that they weren't set at the right settings. For as little as he can hear, they should be amplifying a lot more than what she was hearing from them. With that being said she also was very surprised at the responses she was getting from him. She commented that with hearing loss as bad as he is suppose to have, he shouldn't be responding the way he does. He has startled several times from unexpected noises in the room! He was sleeping in his swing and Karsten came running in yelling something and Seth startled, in his sleep! I don't think I've ever seen that. And my sister told me tonight that he did the same thing when someone shut the door! We are so excited to see this! And in the speech teacher's opinion, as much as audiologists swear that ABR's are very accurate, she has had clients that out perform what the ABR's are saying. So, we see an audiologist in September and she is going to come with me! I've always felt that Seth could hear better than what the tests were saying, but thought that perhaps it's only wishful thinking. I know he'll never hear perfect, but the more he can hear, the better. Even if we still have to supplement with signing, the more verbal conversation we can get out of him, the better!
On the same hearing note, I'm going to have Dane's hearing tested. Perhaps he is just fine. But the more I've talked to audiologists and speech therapists, the more I wonder if he's got some mild hearing problems. I always thought that it was just who Dane was, his mumbling and his use of the word, "huh?" all the time. I just thought he needed to speak up and pay attention! After finding out that these are signs of hearing loss, I thought it can't hurt just to have him tested. So, we'll see. Tomorrow I go in for a consult with the doctor to have a hearing test ordered. If Dane does have any amount of hearing loss, which I really hope he doesn't, than I'll have all the kids tested, just to be sure. Kate and Karsten I'm not really worried about, but I'd be more suspicious of Emily and perhaps Alex. Anyways, call me paranoid, but oh well.
Alex has a sleep study tomorrow night at Walter Reed. Yippee! I get to sleep in the comfy hospital tomorrow night! I've got a book to read, so that's the only thing I'm looking forward to.
Now, off to the struggle I'm having with Alex's schooling. Argh.