What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know Part 6

DURING THE SCHOOL PERIOD

But the opportunities and obligations of the parents of deaf children to aid in their education by no means cease when the children enter school.

Throughout the entire period of school life, and even after their children leave school, the parents can be of very great a.s.sistance to them. During the time that the school is in session, if the child is away from home, the parents should write not less than once a week, and oftener if possible. These letters should contain all the little happenings at home, no matter how insignificant and uninteresting they may seem. If these things are expressed in simple language, using short sentences and common words, the letters will be one of the most efficient means of aiding the children to an ability to read, that the teacher possesses. The child is full of eager curiosity to know the smallest details of the familiar home life. He will exert his mind more to dig out the meaning of the language of home letters than he will to understand a story in a reader. Miss Worcester has suggested one or two little letters that would do during the first half year at school. By the beginning of the second year it would be helpful if the letters read something like this:

"MY DEAR BOY:

"We got your nice letter. Thank you for it. We always like to know what you do at school. We like to know the names of your schoolmates. We are glad when you tell us about your books and your teachers. Mother, Tom, Jane and I are well. We talk about you often. We are glad you can go to school. A cat frightened the hens.

The hens ran. The cat was naughty. I drove the cat away. I think the cat wanted to eat the little chickens.

"Tom hid behind the door. He jumped out quickly. He frightened Jane. She screamed. He laughed. Jane cried. Mother scolded Tom because he made Jane cry. Tom said Jane was a baby. Jane said Tom was a bad boy. Then Jane laughed. She forgave Tom. Tom said he was sorry.

"We all love you.

"Good-by.

"Your loving "FATHER."

Each year the letters can be a little more grown up and they should always be frequent.

XXVI

DURING VACATION

When vacation time comes and the children come home for the summer, the home folks will probably have some trouble at first in understanding their imperfect speech. Do not be discouraged. The speech will steadily improve from year to year, and you will soon be able to comprehend it, even when it is very faulty. But do not accept from the child anything except the best speech he is capable of. When the boy first arrives you will, probably, not know just how much to expect of him. To begin with, it will do him no harm to ask him to repeat what he says, even if you really did understand him the first time. He will probably speak much more distinctly the second time than he did the first, and you will see that you can demand of him more than you at first thought he could do.

He will not be discouraged by being asked to repeat. He is used to it.

The price of good speech, like the price of liberty, is eternal vigilance. During the school period, teachers and parents should give unremitting attention to demanding of the children, _every time they speak_, the best enunciation of which they are at that time capable.

If you do not understand the boy, or he does not understand you, do not let him resort to gestures, nor use them yourself. Give him pencil and paper, if necessary. It will not be necessary often or long, and each day occasions of difficulty will grow fewer.

Provide some useful and helpful occupation for the child for at least a part of each day. Do not let him play at random all the time. Continue a certain regularity of life in the matter of meals and getting up and going to bed. Insist upon respectful behavior and good manners. He has these demanded of him at school. Do not let him return in the fall having lost much that he had gained during the preceding year.

When he is at home keep him in touch with the activities and the topics of discussion in the family circle. Do not let him withdraw or feel shut out. This will take a good deal of effort and self-denial and patience, but in the long run it will repay the parents. Failure to do this will eventually bring sorrow to all concerned. Train the other children to do their share of this. Insist upon their telling the deaf one their plans and their doings. Unless some care is taken he will see the others going without knowing where or why, he will sometimes lose pleasures because he did not hear the talk that was going on around him and no one thought to tell him. This has a tendency to make him bitter and unsocial.

From the very beginning of spoken intercourse with the deaf child the greatest care should be taken to speak NATURALLY to him. Avoid entirely all exaggeration of lip movement and mouth opening. Speak a little slowly, perhaps, and always distinctly, but never with facial contortions and waving hands. The aim of his oral training is to enable him to understand the ordinary speech of people when they speak to him, and to do this he requires an immense amount of practice, just as the hearing child requires a great deal of practice for years before he can understand what people are saying to him. If you speak to him in a different way from that employed when speaking to others he will learn to understand that, but not your ordinary manner of speaking. He will also imitate it himself. The Chinaman speaks and understands only "Pidgin" English because only "Pidgin" English has been used in communicating with him. If people had spoken to the Chinaman as they do to other people he would have gradually acquired good English.

So it is with the deaf child. If you want him to gradually learn to understand the ordinary intercourse of life, you must exercise him in it for years. You must not expect him to get much at first, any more than you expect the baby to understand to start with. But each month he will gain more, and by the time he is sixteen or seventeen he will have very nearly overtaken his hearing brother. But if you always address him with a yawning mouth and flopping tongue and lips, and use deaf-mute English to him, he will progress in his understanding and use of that, but it is not what you wish him to acquire. Be patient, be gentle, be untiring and unremitting in your efforts, but BE NATURAL. _Keep your eyes on his eyes and speak only when his gaze is upon your face._

Before closing I ought to say that (more is the pity) there are many persons who live by trading upon the ignorance and credulity of the unfortunate. The deaf and the friends of the deaf fall an easy prey to the advertis.e.m.e.nts of quack remedies, ear drums, etc., that are always useless and sometimes actually dangerous. The American Medical a.s.sociation has had the courage to issue a pamphlet in which these fake cures are described and exposed, and every deaf person, and parent of a deaf child, should have one of these pamphlets. The t.i.tle is "Deafness Cure Fakes," and can be obtained by writing to the American Medical a.s.sociation, 535 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Any one who has read these pages will easily see that the suggestions are all aimed to secure for the deaf a treatment similar in kind, though somewhat different in degree, to that accorded the normal hearing person. The tendency has been to differentiate the deaf too much from the hearing. By adopting the procedure of pure oralism, effectively applied under _real oral conditions_, uncontaminated, during the educational period from five to twenty years of age, by finger spelling or signs, the deaf will be far more fully restored to a normal position in the social and industrial world than they can ever be by the silent methods at present so largely used during their most impressionable years.

XXVII

SOME NOTS

Do not be downcast.

Deafness does not, necessarily, bring dumbness.

Do not consider the deaf child as different from other children.

Do not cease talking to him.

Do not speak with exaggerated facial movements.

Do not exempt him from the duties and tasks and obedience properly demanded of all children.

Do not let him grow selfish.

Do not let him grow indifferent.

Do not be in haste.

Do not show impatience.