Magda Ambroziak is 12 years old. She has a profound congenital hearing loss. She has received a MEDEL Pulsar cochlear implant in early childhood and today attends mainstream school with normally hearing children. She is a very good student. Her favorite classes are arts and Polish language, she has even won awards in declamation contests. She is interested in languages. She is learning English, but she would like to learn Spanish. She loves music. Soon she will start attending her dreamed-of singing lessons.

Magda has been diagnosed with bilateral hearing loss at a very early age. She was diagnosed at the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing in Warsaw and was provided with hearing aids when she was 3 months old.

– Very quickly she learnt to like them. She was interested in sounds and you could see she was looking for them. This made her rehabilitation very easy – remembers Magda’s mother. – We would react with enthusiasm to any sound she uttered. This encouraged her to use sounds to communicate with us. We were aware, however, that with such profound degree of hearing loss as our daughter had, hearing aids are insufficient.

Magda was implanted at the right ear with a MEDEL Pulsar when she was 1y & 3m old . When she was 7 years old, she received to her left ear another Pulsar Cochlear Implant. Already after the first implantation, thanks to an intensive rehabilitation, she made huge steps forward in her hearing and speaking abilities. Today she speaks very clearly, with good diction. Her voice does not betray her hearing loss.

When she was five, Magda learned to read. She loves books about animals.
– My daughter could often see me read – says Magda’s mother. – This probably encouraged her to learn letters. We decided to try teaching her how to read using Glenn Doman's method. It proved to be very effective.

Magda’s parents decided to send her to a mainstream school with integrated classes. Teachers in her school knew how to communicate with a hard-of-hearing child, to pay special attention to eye contact, as such child can better understand when she can listen and watch.

Magda is doing her homework on her own. Only sometimes her parents help her study.

– I work with my daughter, but I never do her assignments for her. Rather, I show her how to organize her work – says her mother.

Magda has very good contact with her hearing peers. She is popular at school.

– I suppose that my daughter’s stories about pranks she does together with her friends give me as much satisfaction as her good marks. – says Magda’s mother – These positive emotions give her a sense of connectedness and are a whole-life capital, as important as knowledge. This is why I think it is so important to teach children to be open and interested in other people, and to encourage them to share their inner life, their observations, interests. I believe that a child with hearing loss, when it is convinced it has much to offer for others, will not withdraw from peer contacts so easily, even if they would be sometimes hard. – underlines Magda’s mother.


Magda Ambroziak’s story has been published in „Słyszę” issue 5/2014 – Polish bimonthly magazine for people with hearing and speech disorders, published in collaboration with the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing.

Author: Aneta Olkowska
English translation: Olga Wanatowska



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2015 04:46PM by Stavros Hatzopoulos.