By Joe Mussomeli

Like most people, I have some significant memories from childhood that have remained with me and influenced who I am today. One of my most special memories is of practicing speech and auditory therapy with my younger brother, Alex. Alex was born with hearing loss, so my mom and dad intervened early to ensure his future success with not only hearing, but also speech. 

The first step my parents took was to get Alex hearing aids when he was a baby. Later, at age 3, he underwent an operation to receive a cochlear implant in his right ear. After Alex received his implant, my mom began practicing speech and auditory therapy with him.

Every day after school, while other parents took their children to soccer practice or helped them with their homework, my mom worked carefully with Alex to improve his speech and hearing. She made up sentences for Alex to repeat, and then corrected him if he misheard or mispronounced a word. 

Speech and auditory therapy requires a lot of effort. Since my mom put so much time into it, she wanted me to be involved. Sometimes she instructed me to create phrases for Alex to repeat back to me. I knew he found this tedious. Still a little kid myself, just two years older than Alex, this wasn’t exactly thrilling for me but I wanted to help my brother.

Alex constantly felt like he was missing out on activities that his peers were able to enjoy. He often wanted to go outside and play rather than work with my mom, but couldn’t, and it frustrated him. 

One day when he was about 6, Alex decided he was fed up with the obligation to practice his speech and hearing. Although my parents tried to persuade him, he refused and fled upstairs to the bedroom we shared. He loudly sat down on his bed with audible annoyance. 

I was already in our room and asked him what was wrong. He told me he disliked speech and auditory therapy and that he found both to be boring. To him, it was like being enrolled by your parents in an extracurricular activity against your will. He felt powerless. 

Quickly I brainstormed how we could make speech and auditory therapy interesting for him. I asked him what he found fun, and he said he loved reading the Fudge Series by Judy Blume. That gave me an idea. I rushed down the stairs as fast as my eight-year-old legs would carry me to the family room. Spotting the book “Fudge-a-Mania,” I grabbed it and then sprinted back up the stairs to our bedroom. 

Mimicking how my mom practiced with Alex, I read out sections of the book to him and asked him to repeat certain sentences back to me. He complied and was engaged with the story. Alex’s eyes grew as wide as saucers whenever the story mentioned Fudge pulling one of his pranks on his brother Peter and laughed whenever the zany kid succeeded. 

Alex didn’t mind repeating sentences from the book; in fact, he said that it allowed him to fully absorb everything from the story. When we finished the session, Alex was all smiles and told me that he enjoyed listening to the stories. He even asked me if we could do it again. 

“Of course,” I said. I have been reading to Alex for the past nine years.

Outside of our reading sessions, Alex continued speech and auditory therapy with our mom and with professionals both in and out of school. 

Alex’s language development benefited significantly from my reading to him and inspired his love for reading independently. His aptitude for fantasy and fiction stories inspires our entire family.

Joe Mussomeli is a high school student from Connecticut. His younger brother, Alex, was featured in Hearing Health magazine’s Summer 2015 issue.