Hearing impaired children's choir hits the right note
A special singing flash mob surprised visitors to the Jinqiao Life Hub mall in Pudong on Saturday afternoon – a choir made up of children with "ears" behind their ears.
Their additional "ears," in fact, are hearing aids or cochlear implants, devices for people who have permanent, severe to profound hearing loss.
For this reason, their choir was named "Snail Babies," which in Chinese reminds one of the cochlear implant and also bears the meaning that the children might be slower than their peers growing up but are nonetheless tenacious.
The choir was established two years ago at the Shanghai Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled Children, formerly Shanghai Rehabilitation and Vocational Training Center for the Disabled People, a government-held organization with more than two decades of history.
The rehabilitation services provided by the center are entirely free of charge to children born to parents who have Shanghai hukou or those who have residence permits in Shanghai and fulfil certain requirements.
This is a part of the effort of the city to increase the quality of life for children born with hearing impairment and their families. Last year, only five such children were enrolled in the city's special schools for various reasons, while the rest went to normal schools.
Heart in hands
With the flash mob show scheduled at 2pm, four-year-old Hao Hao, one of the choir members, felt a bit drowsy before it started, but singing together with his young friends in front of dozens of cameras made him feel alive again.
Wu Jing, his mother, said this was the first time he had sang in public after joining the choir.
Hao Hao was diagnosed with congenital hearing impairment at a local hospital when he was six months old.
This is one of the most common deformities in newborn babies, with an incidence of 1 to 3 in every 1,000 newborns. About one-third of these children suffer serious hearing loss and need hearing reconstruction. For 20 years, Shanghai has been providing hearing screening services for new-born babies.
After the diagnosis, Wu was told that Hao Hao would need a cochlear implant and was entitled to subsidies from the city's federation of disabled people for it. Half of the cost was subsidized.
Hao Hao was operated on when he was 12 months old, and started his rehabilitation at the rehabilitation center attached to the federation one month later.
At first, Wu and Hao Hao attended a class for parents and toddlers under three years old in which the children are given first ideas of making sounds through games.
"I got worried after some time because with all the input, he still wasn't able to speak a word," Wu said. "We even started to make meaningless noises at home to try to get his attention, but we were advised not to because it could be just a stage."
Then came the moment when Wu realized that Hao Hao was actually calling her Mama with "Nana" and his Papa (in Chinese baba) with "Dada." But the first clearly articulated meaningful phrase for him, Wu fondly remembered, was ayi, which is used in Chinese to address certain women.
Hao Hao was able to utter his first sentences after two years old and now Wu said his language skills as well as cognitive and learning abilities have almost caught up with normal children of his age.
He has been attending a one-on-one class which teaches children with hearing loss to listen and speak using their hearing technology. The method is known as the auditory-verbal therapy (AVT).
"Now we're at the stage of training him to pick up sounds and messages under noisy settings, which is more difficult for children like him," she said. "The teacher advised us to talk to him at normal speed and under any given setting."
Wu was also encouraged to let Hao Hao socialize with children with normal hearing.
"Sooner or later he will find out that he's a little bit different from others, but through normal interaction with others, he will realize that the difference is totally ignorable," she said.
At first, only a handful of her colleagues knew her "secret" that her son was born with defects in hearing, but now she is no longer shy of being a "sharent."
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The Snail Babies Choir performs "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE -
The Snail Babies Choir puts on a flash mob show at the Jinqiao Life Hub mall on the afternoon of December 25. They perform "O The Sea, O My Hometown" and "Listen As I Say Thank You."
Dong Jun / SHINE
About 130 children are taking part in therapy at the rehabilitation center, and half of them are under three years old, said Li Yongqin, director of the education and rehabilitation department. Li is also an experienced teacher for children with impaired hearing.
"When it was first established, the center focused on listening and speaking skills of the children, but in the past decade we have diversified our programs to provide comprehensive rehabilitation services based on pre-school education," she said. "On certain parameters, children from our center have even got ahead of their peers with normal hearing."
Some children like Hao Hao who attended the center from being toddlers were able to enter normal kindergartens. Some of the choir members alongside Hao Hao in the flash mob are "graduates" of the center.
At the center, the children have music classes, and in cooperation with Shanghai Conservatory of Music, they formed a choir. Huang Heting, a graduate student of music education at the conservatory, is currently the coach of the choir.
"Some children are better at grasping the notes, while others are not, but as a choir they're as good as those made up of children of normal hearing, if not better," she said.
She added that she plans to arrange a musical for the children next year of which they will be totally capable.
Quest for hope
A total of 27 teachers are working at the center at the moment. Some who provide one-on-one therapy have seven or eight classes a day, which is quite demanding.
"We're devoted to our job which is so much a first-aid help to the children and their families with a dire need," Li said. "In a not small number of cases, the children are born to families with inherited deafness. It's an immeasurable satisfaction to us when parents who often come to us in desperation have hope in their hearts again after two or three years."
Wu Rongxiu, a teacher who has been working for eight years at the center and has helped more than 100 children with hearing impairment, said she had no idea that there were so many children with this need before she started out.
"When a child of eight months old who has no idea of meaningful sounds can have normal conversation with you after two or three years, it's a great fulfilment," she said.
There are harder cases to deal with, such as children who suffer not only hearing loss, but also autism. Wu is helping one such child at the moment.
"After tunings of his cochlear implant, he's able to hear rather well at the moment, but he's slower than other children in learning meanings because it's harder for autistic children to accept things they're not familiar with," she said. "For example, it took us half a year to let him understand what is a rabbit."
After tutorials to both the child and his parents, not only is the child feeling closer to his parents now, he's also able to grasp two words at the same time and have eye contact with people.
Zhou Airan, another teacher of the center, is now training a child who was the first in China to have an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) in February 2019 when he was 26 months old.
The child, who was diagnosed with severe congenital hearing impairment, was not able to have a cochlear implant because he also has inner ear malformation.
The ABI surgery was introduced earlier in some other countries, but people who have undergone the operation showed different levels of hearing recovery afterwards.
Starting his rehabilitation at the center with Zhou in May 2019, the child for now still can't hear well and is still not able to properly speak.
"For him, we're taking a somewhat different approach," Zhou said. "Since he has shown interest in written words, we have been helping him to develop his cognitive ability through visual prompts."
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Teacher Wu Rongxiu plays a game to help a child develop his speech capability.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
Wu Rongxiu (left) plays a game with Chen Chen and his mom to develop his speech capability. Chen Chen is told to draw three cards which have an object painted on them each and tell a story. Wu and his mom "win" a card when they tell correctly an object mentioned in his story.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
Wu Rongxiu (left) plays a game with Chen Chen and his mom to develop his speech capability. Chen Chen is told to draw three cards which have an object painted on them each and tell a story. Wu and his mom "win" a card when they tell correctly an object mentioned in his story.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
Wu Rongxiu (left) plays a game with Chen Chen and his mom to develop his speech capability. Chen Chen is told to draw three cards which have an object painted on them each and tell a story. Wu and his mom "win" a card when they tell correctly an object mentioned in his story.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
Some teaching materials of Wu.
Dong Jun / SHINE -
Five adults and toddlers on a parent-child class held at the center for children under three years old.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
Five adults and toddlers on a parent-child class held at the center for children under three years old.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
The classroom where the parent-child class is held.
Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE -
A classroom at the center for children of kindergarten age.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE -
A classroom at the center for children of kindergarten age.
Chen Huizhi / SHINE
