THE SHADDOX BOYS

Jacob and Elijah Shaddox are brothers. Jacob is 21 years old and just moved into an apartment with his girlfriend. He graduated from a technical college with an Associate's degree in Computer Maintenance. He works for a school district as a computer technician. Elijah is almost 18 years old. He is hearing impaired, has Tourette Syndrome, OCD and ADHD. He is a junior in high school. Elijah lives with his mom Mary and her wife, his stepmom. Mary has a bachelor's in deaf education and a masters in special education, and is an educational diagnostician. Life is always changing and this blog has chronicled many of these changes and will continue to do so!






Friday, August 29, 2014

Elijah and his iPhone!

Elijah has taken his iPhone to school each day this week with no problems, that is until today. I got a call from one of his teachers about his behavior. He had to be asked twice to put away his phone and he disrupted the class quite a bit. He ended up in the principal's office. I told my honey this story and so she went on the hunt for an app that I could use to control his phone....and she found one. It is called ParentKit and I installed it tonight. I am going to take advantage of their one month free trial. Here is a link http://www.parentkit.co/

I installed the app on my phone and then added Elijah as one of my kids. The app then gave me a website to go to on his iPhone. I went to the website and entered a code that I got from MY iphone when I was registering him as a user. Once I did that, I then had control of his iPhone. I went to the app on my iPhone and set up his account. I turned off Safari and the ability to install apps or make in app purchases. I then went into the scheduling part of the account and set up very specific times he could have access to the apps on his iPhone. He now can't get to his games during the day at school. I set up his lunch time as a time for when he can access his apps. I then turned them off again and set it for him to have access after school. I am going to let him know that I can take away the lunch time access if he doesn't start behaving, especially since his behavior today occurred after lunch.

I showed him his iPhone with the game app not there. I then turned them back on and let's just say he wasn't too happy. I am sure he won't like me too much after all of this, but parenting is not an easy job and I don't have to be popular.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Update on the Lost Freedom Processor

I have blogged about sending Elijah's Freedom Processors to Cochlear to be cleaned, when he got his N6 processors activated. We received one Freedom back after about four weeks and then we didn't get the second one. I called and as I blogged, received poor customer service. It took another three weeks to get the second Freedom processor back. We now have two sets of Freedom processors as back ups for Elijah. I had purchased a new two year warranty on his newest set of Freedoms in June 2013. I sent the paperwork in to cancel that warranty and get a partial refund, which will then go towards the portion of his N6s that we had to pay for. I am hoping that this warranty refund will be between $500-$1200, but you never know. We now have a new three year warranty on the new N6s that he received in June. It will take about four weeks for the refund to show on the credit card I used to charge it on last  year. Hopefully, there won't be any issues with this!

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Misconceptions

Earlier today, my doorbell rang and so I went to answer the door. When I opened the door, there were two women standing there both looking at me. I stood there and waited, and they didn't say anything. I then asked who they were looking for. The taller woman then gestured to the shorter one who began signing. The taller woman started interpreting for her. I then told them both that I know sign language. They were Jehova's Witnesses, who wanted to tell me about some videos online for children with sign language. We spoke, and then I asked them how they knew I had a deaf son. Now, realize, they had never asked me if I had a son who was deaf, and I doubt they just went door to door informing people of these videos. They then said that a neighbor had mentioned to another Jehova's Witness that there was a deaf boy who lived on the street. I am sure it came up when someone saw the DEAF CHILD AREA sign on our street.


Many people have the misconception that all deaf children sign. Granted, Elijah does understand some signs, but it is not his main mode of communication. The same is true for children with cochlear implants, not all of these children can communicate orally. Many children with cochlear implants still use sign language. There is no right or wrong way, there is just the way that is right for that particular child or family.