(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Singing and signing are intertwined as a main form of communication for a group of young children with hearing difficulties. Inside one room at Children’s Colorado Therapy Care on Telstar, Sara Robinson leads a group of Southern Colorado families in a deaf and hard of hearing baby group.

“The goal of the class is to offer six-week sessions for families to come meet each other, get some support from each other, learn about their child’s hearing difference,” said Robinson. “Then we offer these six-week sessions about four times a year.”

A big smile immediately grew on the face of one child in the baby group.

Big smiles and happy laughs fill the room as these children make connections to new words and recognize certain sounds.

“A lot of these kids who are coming in here from families are wanting some sort of combination of spoken language outcomes,” Robinson said. “With some sound support and building the connection between what we hear and what we say is really important for building language and communication.”

Sara Robinson used sound object association to teach one of the children a new word.

Using the power of sound-object association, Robinson made the sound of an airplane while also presenting a toy plane, to help facilitate a new word connection. Another exercise presented to the group was singing a Halloween themed song to the tune of Wheels on the Bus.

“I started the Halloween song is one of the original ones,” Robinson said. “I actually found somebody else created it, but then it gave me an idea that I could create a song to the tune of the Wheels on the Bus for every month of the year. Learning vocabulary is really important for kids with hearing differences, and so this provides a great way to learn vocabulary related to different seasons and holidays.”

In singing a song, families practiced speech and language skills in the Wednesday group meeting.

Parents joined in on the singing and signed to their children saying ‘trick or treat’ and ‘Happy Halloween.’ One parent, Shay Smiley, expressed the immense impact these activities have in fostering her son’s development of speech and language skills.

“She’s helped us build kind of a toolkit that we’ve been able to take home and practice, some like the signing and the songs and a myriad of activities,” Smiley said. “Every week that we came, we took away a different activity that we were then able to incorporate at home to help him learn signs, learn to listen, learn to watch. Just all good things as he is developing his language skills.”

Sara Robinson winds up a toy dog as part of a learning activity on Wednesday afternoon.

While the children are building on their communication skills, they also are able to find friends within the group. Specifically, Smiley shared the story of meeting a little girl in this group session who had the same diagnosis which her son has.

“I had never seen anybody with a little ear,” Smiley said. “When we came to this group and met another little girl who’s his age, who also has it, who also wears the soft band baha [Cochlear aid], that he can kind of look to for peer support as they grow up together. I mean, that’s invaluable.”

Another parent, Michaela Mozo, opened up on the positive impact this group has had on her in finding a community who is bonded over hearing difficulties.

“When people don’t have a child with hearing loss, they don’t understand,” Mozo said. “Especially unilateral hearing loss is one of those things, it’s a gray area between hearing and the deaf community because, you’re not fully hearing, you’re not fully deaf. So being able to actually have other parents that are like, ‘I get it, I get the struggles.”‘

In this unique group, these parents and children are creating an unspoken bond that is undeniably felt.

“It’s just been, it’s been an amazing group,” Mozo said. “It’s changed my life, having a child with unilateral hearing loss in general has changed my entire life and this group, it’s amazing.”

This program is free for Southern Colorado families thanks to support from the Daniels Fund. You can learn more about the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation online.