Welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein.
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Now, today’s episode is about Auditory Verbal Therapy. And if you’ve heard this term or if you know about this, you also know that it can be touchy for some people and I’m always really interested in learning how other people are approaching the entire story, the entire challenge, the entire journey of having a child with a hearing loss, of learning what the options are. Where on the process are they getting their information from? These are all the questions that really occupy me and make me so passionate about this work and in working with parents. allaboutauidology.com/guide
So, of course I wanted to learn more about this very important and prominent approach in the world of Auditory Verbal training for children with hearing loss and children who have hearing aids or get implanted with cochlear implants. And, so, I had the opportunity to speak with the executive director of AV Israel, an Auditory Verbal Therapy organization here in Israel. For those of you that don’t know, about a year and a half ago, I moved to Israel from New York. Actually there is a little bit of Hebrew sprinkled in our conversation when I spoke with Miss Elaine Matlow Tal-El and we’re going to talk about her journey in moving to Israel and her two daughters who are cochlear-implant users and what it was like. They’re now 29-year-old twins, and what it was like when they were young and cochlear implants were just coming onto the scene for children, and also being English speakers in a foreign country. The fact that she has done so much and started this non-profit and established a big supportive organization in Israel is really, really wonderful. It was wonderful to speak with her.
Just a couple quick notes about our conversation. You will hear some Hebrew words but we do explain them. The first one is called, making Aliyah, which is moving to Israel from another country, is sometimes referred to as making Aliyah. We also had this conversation back in July, so you’ll hear us talking about some dates which are not current to right now. I did ask her to just start off with an introduction to Auditory Verbal Therapy for people who don’t know what that is. So here is how she describes Auditory Verbal Therapy.
EM: “The auditory verbal approach is a science-based, an evidence-based practice for rehabilitation based on nine principles, if I’m not mistaken. Early intervention, early diagnosis, a use of technology, mainstreaming, parents as partners… It’s a diagnostic method that follows normative speech and language development markers so you can see that that’s working. But it’s based really on the fact that parents are at the center of a process that is there to e...
