Here's a cool story. A 5th grade deaf girl with a cochlear implant won a NFL essay contest where she got the chance to speak (with her voice) about her essay.

Caroline Masia, a 5th grader at Highland Oak Elementary in North Miami Beach, will be rubbing elbows with the some of the NFL's big boys after she won the league's "Winning Moments" essay contest.

Yesterday, Masia, who was born deaf, was announced as the Grand Prize winner of the contest, and her class got a visit from Dolphins nose tackle Paul Soliai and running back Kory Sheets.

The contest was sponsored by the NFL Players Association as part of their "Stay Cool in School" Program. Kids submitted essays detailing their "Winning Moments."

For Masia, who had Cochlear implants to give her hearing for the first time in her life, picking a winning moment was easy.

"Every song I hear is special," Masia said yesterday, as she read her essay to Soliai, Sheets and her classmates. "My winning moment started with my first implant, leading to my first sound and continues every day that I can hear the beautiful sounds of the world."

I'd say good job Maria! And cool that she got the chance to speak, too. But one Deaf man is literally upset over this that the news media covered a story about a deaf girl with a cochlear implant who can speak very well. RLM essentially whined thinking this is somehow an Alexander Graham Bell (AGBell) pre-planned counter-offensive attack against a superbowl Pepsi ad aired a few years back with Deaf actors signing in ASL (which, btw, reminds me of my Pepsi video spoof I did as well). Nice conspiracy theory but this is between a video commericial versus a news story and surely nothing to do with AGBell.

What this shows is that Maria has a lot of self-esteem and confidence in her ability to listen and speak very well as evidently seen in the video (scroll down to video portion). I'm not surprised that a cochlear implant can help bolster self-esteem and confidence in many deaf children. A recent study came out tells exactly that comparing quality of life of cochlear implanted children (8 to 11, and 12 to 16 years old) from 88 families with that of their hearing peers.

Previous studies have indicated that deaf children feel less socially accepted, experience more difficulty in making friends, and show greater adjustment problems than their hearing peers.

However, the findings of the new research, a cross-sectional study of 88 families with CI children from 16 U.S. states, differ from traditional conclusions.

The study team used a generic QOL questionnaire. The subjects were divided by age of the child when they filled out the questionnaire - an 8-11-year-old group and a 12-16-year-old group.

Both parents and children filled out the QOL questionnaire, with the parents assessing their child. The study group was then compared to a control group of 1,501 NH children in fourth and eighth grades.

Results of the questionnaire showed that overall QOL did not differ between CI and NH groups. However, examination of individual subscales disclosed that 8-11-year-old CI children rate their QOL with family less positively than their NH peers.

Younger CI recipients rated overall QOL more positively than the older 12-16-year-old CI group. But, the authors believe that this could be a reflection of standard adolescent behaviour.

By and large QOL showed a significant inverse association with age at implantation, and a significant positive correlation with duration of CI use in the 12-16-year-old group.

The authors say that even though prior studies have appraised QOL in CI children, this study adds additional perspective to the literature, as it combines assessments by the actual CI recipients and parents, and it maps the results in context with NH children.

The research also demonstrates that parents proved to be reliable reporters for their children in areas where they could observe and participate.

The authors write: “For profoundly deaf children who regularly use a cochlear implant, feelings about life overall are no better or worse than their hearing peers. These findings indicate that cochlear implantation has a positive effect on certain psycho-social domains.”

In a nutshell, cochlear implant recipients are able to fare emotionally, socially, and mentally on par with that of their hearing peers, faring no worse. A cochlear implant enables younger recipients with improved self-esteem and confidence. As in Maria's case, she spoke with such eloquence and confidence no wonder she was the darling news story of the day.