The way to the world of sounds – children with cochlear implants visit ordinary kindergartens in Bashkiria

161 children with cochlear implants need social adaptation and rehabilitation in Bashkiria for today, the Ministry of health protection RB reports. Cochlear implantation helps to return the hearing to people but rather long rehabilitation is necessary after the operation because the implant itself doesn’t give a chance to hear but stimulates the auditory nerve with the electrical impulses. The kids have to be taught to hear, understand the speech and speak and specialists say such children shouldn’t be kept separately at the special institutions but have to stay among healthy kids. Such practice already exists in Ufa. The children with cochlear implants visit the ordinary kindergarten N 240 in the city and practically every group of healthy kids in the kindergarten includes one-two kids with the cochlear implants. “We lay special stress on pronunciation of the sounds, when working with such children” – the governess Elvira Shamsutdinova says – “Of course, we can develop the phonetic hearing with the implants but we have to teach the children to pronounce the sounds correctly and if such education is successful there will be no problems for such children to live in an ordinary society”.