When I put Riley's hearing aids in each morning I'm doing the equivalent of saying "here Riley take two thousand dollars to school and be careful with it all day and make sure you bring it home with out any wrinkles." Then he gets to school and they add an FM system to it and it brings the value up several hundred additional dollars.
My freak out level with this has gone down considerably over the years that Riley has worn hearing aids. With each new incident or game of find the hearing aid I have learned to just let it go. I can't possibly expect Riley to completely understand just how much value he totes around in his ears. Over time we have worked through many issues and Riley has become much more responsible with his "ears". He often will ask for a break when the sound is overwhelming. He typically will give them to an adult or put them in his special cup. He hasn't hid them under his bed or behind the books in ages. We have survived preschool, kindergarten and first grade along with multiple babysitters, trips to Gramma's and just the over all craziness that comes with Riley. We had a good long run of being able to find his hearing aids after a night spent on the playground, a random day in our drive way, hidden in classrooms, and goodness knows how many times we have turned our house upside down looking for them. They have always turned up. I have learned to stay calm....they always surface.
Well, last Thursday he didn't have them on when I picked him up from school which is not abnormal. They have been packing them up in his back pack so I didn't think about it and off to OT we headed. Didn't cross my mind again until Justin found just one hearing aid on the couch Friday morning. We can only assume that sometime during the school day on Thursday he took them out and stuffed them in his pocket. He started doing this because his teacher doesn't stop him. She seems to think this is an acceptable thing for thing for him to do so he continues to do it. That hearing aid is somewhere between where he stuffed them in his pocket and here. The possibilities are endless. We don't know when during the day he took them off so they could be anywhere in the school or playground. We do know they aren't in the van, the OT's office and likely aren't in the house. There is a distinct possibility that Oakley chewed it up and is currently trying to digest it. It is equally likely that she has already pooped it out somewhere in our yard. Feel free to look...I'm not going to.
As Rex says.....we had a good run. It took him over three years but he finally managed to lose a hearing aid.
This afternoon we went to see our friend Nancy at Columbia Hearing and had molds taken for new aids. We go back on Halloween to get all set up. He is pretty relaxed at Nancy's office. He just hops up in her chair and chats away while she squirts this silly putty like goo in his ear and then waits for it to harden so she can remove it. It makes me a little twitchy just thinking about something squishy in my ear.
You'll have to tune in later to see what kind of sweet new hearing aids he picked. Or try to get him to tell you about them. I'm excited we get them on Halloween. Its going to complete the costume. He's pretty excited too... I'm hoping that the excitement of it will help him want to wear them at school.
The really frustrating part of all of this is that he has more adult supervision this year than he ever has at school. Add that to the fact that any adult would watch a kid put a pair of hearing aids in their pockets and think it was ok is more than my current frustration level and lack of patience can handle. I get to spend the next two weeks trying to get school on board with a better plan to ensure we don't have anymore lost hearing aids. Why do I some how think this is going to be one more reason they try to take him out of a gen ed classroom.
Don't forget the time I got to fish them out of the toilet!!!!! He had his own stock of rice and ziplock bags at school just for these events.
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