Speech delayed almost 2 year old screaming

My son had cochlear implants put in about a year ago, and he will be 2 in January. He was born profoundly deaf, but he is making great strides in spoken language. The struggle is that he has a bit of a gap between his mental age and his verbal age. We chose not to do sign language at this time as it can interrupt spoken skills. (This is not true for hearing children, it applies to aided speech skills) Recently, he has switched from screaming as an outlet (just a natural reaction) to screaming as a communication form, and it's really wearing my husband and I down. I know he's just mad that he can't express himself in language, and for the most part we actually do know what he's saying with his limited vocabulary. He just doesn't 'agree', which is pretty normal for toddlers.What isn't normal is his grasp on language. Almost all of the parenting tips I've seen for toddlers involve communication skills. "How to talk so little kids will listen" "labeling emotions so they know how they feel". All well and good and definitely my plan in the future, but does anyone have any advice on what to do while we are still working on bridging the gap? He is for sure screaming right in our faces to get a reaction, and it is practically kryptonite. We both want to do whatever it takes to make it stop. It will never "bother" his ears in the same way because although he can hear the volume he's hitting, the technology is pretty advanced and the sound doesn't "hurt" his ears like it does ours. If it did, it would be incentive for him to remove the processors out of annoyance, so we are glad for it. It just makes this phase very complicated. Does anyone have any ideas how to nip the screaming in the bud? We are obviously working on the language part even still, but it may be a while and I need to do something so I don't lose my mind before that 😬ETA: We do go through our states early intervention program and see a Teacher of the Deaf biweekly. He's doing as best as he can speech wise, that is improving every day and can't be rushed any more than it already is moving. I'm just wondering if there are any other tools besides conversing we can employ as we work towards better communication. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2O6XzuF