Meet our Families > Summer Sessions
Yaman’s Heart
Yaman came into the world with a heart condition. Doctors were so concerned about his heart that they failed to check his hearing. This is the story of his family’s journey from Oslo to London to
Los Angeles, where Yaman’s mother found John Tracy Clinic.
In Norway, where Yaman was born, hearing screening for newborns still is not routine. His mother, Leyla, a single parent, took him to Turkey, her country of birth, and noticed that her baby didn’t react to any loud noises. When she returned to Norway, she was told Yaman was fine, but with her persistence, he was eventually diagnosed with severe to profound deafness and fitted with hearing aids.
At age one and a half, Yaman was given a cochlear implant then enrolled in preschool in Oslo, but Leyla felt his options for learning spoken language were few.
“I was quite lost,” she says, and looked everywhere for help – England, Germany and, finally, America. “All I knew was that I didn’t want his life to be limited, to be confined to one country or culture. I wanted him to have spoken language, and I wanted one of those languages to be English.”
Then one day, a friend told her about the free services of John Tracy Clinic and she wrote for more information. She knew from the moment the Clinic replied that she had found the place for her and her son, and she immediately joined the Worldwide Correspondence Course for Parents. “I finally found people who understood what I had been through and would help me unconditionally.”
Leyla and Yaman completed the Distance Education for Parents Courses and, with her parents’ support, flew to Los Angeles in July 2004 to attend the Clinic’s International Summer Session. Before the three-week session ended, with Yaman’s listening skills improving and his English just beginning to emerge, Leyla already knew what to do next. After consulting with the Clinic staff, she and Yaman went back to Norway, gathered up their belongings and returned to John Tracy Clinic in time for preschool in September.
As Yaman “graduates” from John Tracy Clinic in May of this year, his English is fluent and interchanged freely with his Norwegian, and he has already been accepted at a local elementary school for the oral deaf.
“Without language, Yaman was extremely dependent upon me,” his mother says. “Now, it’s almost the opposite. He sometimes doesn’t even want me around. And that’s fine. His liberation is also mine.”
Leyla and Yaman have now decided they want to make their home in America.