Bethany Rodgers from Atlanta, Ga., recently released a video of her son getting his first pair of hearing aids and his reaction to hearing his first sounds.
In the video, Jay Rodgers who was 10 months old at the time, was in the hospital, getting fitted for the electronic devices made to amplify sound.
The video, originally shot in 2015 but released on July 28, shows little Jay overwhelmed by the sound around him. You can hear his parents talking to him and Jay looking with eyes wide open in awe.
Without a hearing aid, Jay can’t hear from his left ear and can only make out deep sounds like vacuuming or hammering from his right ear.
“All of his senses are heightened except for his hearing. So all of a sudden, that’s now working and it’s almost like an overload of his senses. It was kind of frightening for him at first,” Rodgers told Global News.
But Rodgers added that the hearing aids have changed his life over time.
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Now, he has had them in for a couple of years and barely takes them out. Before he got the devices, he could barely speak or make any sounds. He would make random sounds, Rodgers said, but he could never make distinct ones like the sound of a car or a dog.
Rodgers says she hopes the video inspires other families to get help if they are dealing with a hearing-impaired child. She says the hearing aids opened up her son to a world where he is better able to communicate with people.
“Our main thing with sharing these is to bring awareness, children who are deaf, there is nothing cognitively wrong with them, they just have delays, and they enjoy the same things other kids love. They just need a little extra help and patients from people.”
“If someone else has a child who is deaf, they should know that they have someone they could go to to get help they need.”
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