Hearing Impaired Homeschooling Mishap

Recently Cam got a hold of Nia's hearing aid, ripped it into 2 pieces and lost part of it (luckily it was the cheaper part). The kids were upstairs and I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but it happened. Not having her hearing aid makes life and school a pinch harder for Nia. Without it she must be looking exactly at your lips to really understand what you are saying. Her speech is also difficult to understand when her hearing aid is out. I really didn't realize how difficult her speech was to understand until she began wearing the hearing aid and has now had to do without it. It has made a huge change in how she pronounces words and her spelling ability has improved leaps and bounds. It makes perfect sense; being able to hear how a word is formed is a key part in pronouncing and spelling it properly.

A little about Sania's hearing aid

Nia's hearing aid consists of of 2 main parts the electrical part and a molded part that fits inside her ear. The one shown has an older molding that is now a little to small and has a crack in it. These two pieces each have a tube that extends from them and the two tubes join together (This is where Cam tore it apart). The electrical part can last 3 to 5 years. For the molded part we have a to get a new mold made every few months as she grows as this is the part that goes inside the ear. It's nice that she gets to pick a new color scheme every few months for the ear piece. She gets to pick the colors, but we won't know exactly how it's maker will put those colors together until it arrives in the mail a few weeks later. Her last color choices were black and white. When it arrived, she wasn't as happy with it as she has been previously (which I believe is part of the reason Cameron was able to get his little fingers on it). The colors are usually fairly crisp, but the black and white were mudded together making a lot of gray. It kind of looked like, well, mold.

How we try to prevent this sort of thing

Several places in the house we have tiny bowls perched in high places, well high enough Cameron can't reach them. I think most of the bowls, like the one pictured, would be considered salt bowls. Nia generally takes her hearing aid out if it starts to get a bit itchy, when she is home alone or for an assortment of other reasons. I started grabbing up these bowls because without a designated spot close by for Nia to put her hearing aid, it was being placed anywhere and everywhere. This led to it constantly being lost. We would find it in pockets, amongst dirty dishes, under clothes in the bathroom, in a shoe, I'm sure you get the picture. Although usually very cheap, this bowls can be a little hard to find. Most households just don't use salt bowls anymore. We currently have 4, but my goal is to collect enough to put close by to all of the spots she has a tendency to take off the hearing aid. I think another 4 would cover it.