Ivan
Peter

Twelve years ago our first child, Ivan, was born, a beautiful, healthy baby boy. Or so it seemed at the time, as for the first year all smiles, giggles and movements were perfectly age-appropriate. Eventually though we began to notice that Ivan's responses were somewhat random and incoherent, and, keeping the story short, at the age of 18 months Ivan was diagnosed with mild to moderate hearing loss. The hearing-loss quickly deteriorated and by the age of two Ivan had no hearing left and thus became a valid candidate for a Cochlear Implant. Unfortunately it was only the beginning of a hard journey. Around the same age Ivan began to develop a range of odd behaviours and, even though he was hearing well within the speech range with his implant, neither expressive nor receptive speech was coming along as expected, to our dismay. It soon became obvious even to a non-specialist that Ivan had a classic text-book case of Autism spectrum disorder. The diagnosis was soon confirmed.

We now had to deal with the two disabilities that overlapped so well that it was very hard to tell which one had a worse effect on Ivan's development. But luckily for us throughout those early years we have met with some very dedicated people who have given us support and hope. With the combined efforts of The Shepherd Centre, SCIC, Aspect, and later MREIC, we began to make little steps forward.

So, where are we now? Ivan's about to start high school next year. Both of his diagnoses have made a profound impact on his learning, and Ivan's IQ falls within moderate intellectual delay range, although the behaviours are much easier to deal with as his communication is improving every day. His speech at present is still delayed, but he's making a great use of what he has - including fine use of swear words (which he seem to have picked up without that constant repetition that we needed to provide for a lot of other words in his vocabulary, surprise-surprise!). He learned to say "thank you" in Russian and shows off amongst the relatives. The other day he came home and told me that as he was riding a bike outside, he came across some firemen. He then initiated a conversation with them to find out the cause of the flood that the firemen were dealing with I won't exaggerate if I say that Ivan's vocabulary is expanding every day before our very eyes! Our journey continues, but even at this stage it's obvious that Ivan already has enough speech to deal with a lot of everyday situations and he's very keen to take his skills further.

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