Little Mayar was only eight months old when his parents noticed that their child was having trouble paying attention: “We went to an audiologist, a doctor who specializes in hearing disorders, and he told us that our son was not able to hear at all and that he needed a cochlear implant .” He is now twelve and has come a long way since then!
Cochlear implant: what it is and what it is used for
The device Mayar needed is an electronic device that allows people with severe hearing loss
to restore hearing .
It is used in cases where traditional hearing aids are not effective; to insert the device behind the ear, surgery is required, followed by a period of hearing rehabilitation.
It is still Mayar’s father who tells the story of the path followed by the child a few years later: “The surgery was a success”.
In the EHIS center in Aleppo
Mayar has made great progress since she started attending the EHIS center in Aleppo , which AMU supports through the Seeds of Hope program, which ensures hearing-impaired children learn the school curriculum. 
“His response was gradual, as were his improvements in language,” in parallel with his improvements in school.
The teachers at the center played a fundamental role, also helping the parents understand how to communicate with their son, and now “Mayar reads and writes well” says the father with joy.
The valuable work done by the teachers of the EHIS center
The teachers at the EHIS center say that the first steps taken with Mayar were those of verbal and auditory rehabilitation, guiding him first to recognize the presence of a sound and then to distinguish one sound from another.
The second step was to accompany the little student in pronouncing the individual letters of the alphabet. Then came the whole words : “Now he has a good vocabulary and we are working on the formation of sentences: he can tell a story in a clear and understandable way”.
