What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know
J >> John Dutton Wright >> What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to KnowWHAT THE MOTHER OF A
DEAF CHILD OUGHT TO KNOW
BY
JOHN DUTTON WRIGHT
FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL OF THE WRIGHT ORAL SCHOOL FOR THE
DEAF, NEW YORK CITY; COLLABORATOR OF "THE LARYNGO-
SCOPE" AND THE "VOLTA REVIEW"; DIRECTOR OF THE
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION TO PROMOTE THE TEACHING
OF SPEECH TO THE DEAF; AUTHOR OF "EDUCA-
TIONAL NEEDS OF THE DEAF," FOR THE
GUIDANCE OF PHYSICIANS
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1915, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages_
_March, 1915_
TO MY WIFE
AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THIS LITTLE BOOK
WAS WRITTEN IN ORDER THAT MOTHERS
MAY DO ALL IN THEIR POWER FOR
THEIR DEAF CHILDREN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE ix-xix
I. FACING THE FACTS 1
II. HOW SHALL THE MOTHER BEGIN HER PART OF THE WORK? 5
III. HOW SHALL THE MOTHER GET INTO COMMUNICATION
WITH HER DEAF CHILD? 13
IV. WHAT ABOUT THE BABY'S SPEECH? 20
V. DEVELOPING THE MENTAL FACULTIES 22
VI. DEVELOPING THE LUNGS 30
VII. THE CULTIVATION OF CREATIVE IMAGINATION 32
VIII. FURTHER TESTS OF HEARING 34
IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF RESIDUAL HEARING 38
X. DEVELOPING THE POWER OF LIP-READING 43
XI. FORMING CHARACTER 47
XII. CULTIVATING THE SOCIAL INSTINCT 50
XIII. SOMETHING ABOUT SCHOOLS AND METHODS 53
XIV. THE PRESERVATION OF SPEECH. WHEN DEAFNESS
RESULTS FROM ACCIDENT OR ILLNESS AFTER INFANCY 58
XV. TEACHING LIP-READING 61
XVI. SCHOOL AGE 63
XVII. ORGANIZED EFFORTS BY PARENTS TO OBTAIN
BETTER EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS 65
XVIII. A PERSONAL MATTER FOR EACH PARENT 68
XIX. DAY SCHOOLS 72
XX. THE DEAF CHILD AT FIVE YEARS OF AGE 73
XXI. SCHOOLS FOR THE HEARING AND PRIVATE GOVERNESSES 75
XXII. IMPORTANCE OF THE BEGINNING 80
XXIII. AVOID THE YOUNG AND INEXPERIENCED TEACHER 82
XXIV. ON ENTERING SCHOOL 83
XXV. DURING THE SCHOOL PERIOD 98
XXVI. DURING VACATION 101
XXVII. SOME NOTS 107
PREFACE
The mother of a little deaf child once wrote as follows:
"As a mother of a deaf child, and one whose experience has been
unusual only in that it has been more fortunate than that of the
average mother so situated, I want to place before you (the
teachers of the deaf) a plea for the education of the parents of
little deaf children.
"While you are laboring for the education of the deaf, and for
their sakes are training teachers to carry on the work, there are,
in almost every home that shelters a little deaf child, blunders
being made that will retard his development and hinder your work
for years to come--blunders that a little timely advice might
prevent. We parents are not willfully ignorant, not always stupidly
so; but that we are in most cases densely so, there can be no
doubt.
"Can you for the moment put yourselves into our place? Suppose you
are just the ordinary American parents, perhaps living far from the
center of things. You know in a hazy way that there are deaf and
blind and other afflicted people--perhaps you have seen some of
them.
"Now, into your home comes disease or a sudden awakening to the
meaning of existing conditions, and you find that _your_ child is
_deaf_.
"At first your thought is of physicians; they fail you. Advice from
friends and advertisements from quacks pour in upon you; still you
find no comfort and no help.
"You stop talking to the child. What is the use? He cannot hear
you! You pity him--oh, infinitely! And your pity takes the form of
indulgence. You love him and you long to understand him; but you
cannot interpret him and he feels the change, the helplessness in
your attitude toward him. You try one thing after another,
floundering desperately in your effort to discover what radical
step must be taken to meet this emergency. After a time you seize
upon the idea that seems to you the best. Probably it is to wait
until he is six or seven and then put him into an institution. But
while you wait for school age to arrive, you lose that close touch
with the soul of your child which may be established only in these
early years, for you have no adequate means of communication with
him--no way to win his confidence. Soon the child has passed this
stage, and no school can ever give him what you might and would
have given had you known how.
"You who are trained teachers of the deaf can hardly realize the
need of advice about matters perfectly obvious to YOU; but the need
exists. May I tell you from my own experience a few of the things
about which you might advise--you, who know!
"In the first place, suggest to parents that they make simple
tests of their children's hearing; and tell them how and why those
who are _partially_ deaf should be helped.
"Then tell them to talk, and talk, and talk, to their little deaf
ones--to say everything and say it naturally. And tell them some
things in particular that should be said--commands, etc., and
_certainly_ 'I love you.' Tell them to speak in whole sentences.
Give them an idea of the possibilities of lip-reading.
"Tell them that _by the expression of the face_ they may convey to
the deaf child the interest, approval, disapproval, etc., that they
would express to a hearing child in the tone of voice.
"Tell them that there is _rarely_ an untrained person who can
_safely_ meddle with articulation.
"Tell them that it is not true that all deaf children are bad; that
the deaf must learn obedience as others do.
"Tell them the many things which you wish your pupils had learned
before they entered school.
"Only this I beg of you--tell them!
"LUCILE M. MOORE."
For the sake of presenting the ideas contained in this little book in a
somewhat systematic manner it was best to arrange them on the
supposition that they would come to the notice of the mothers while
their children were yet less than two years of age. In many cases,
however, this will not be the case. When, therefore, the child is three,
four, or five years old when this falls into the hands of the mother, it
would still be well if she carried out the suggestions in the order in
which they are here arranged. With the maturity of mind and body that
comes with the added years, the child can pass through the earlier
stages of the training much more rapidly than can be the case with the
baby. Nevertheless, the preliminary steps should not be omitted. A child
of four can be carried in six months through the exercises that occupied
two years when begun with the child of twelve months, but the older
child should not be started with exercises suggested for the years after
two.
Mothers of deaf children cannot be expected to be trained teachers of
the deaf. It would be useless, and, in fact, often unfortunate, to ask
them to attempt to teach articulation to their children. Even for them
to teach the children to write would usually be undesirable because the
greatest gain from the mother's efforts comes from the early
establishment of the speech-reading habit and _entire_ dependence upon
it. It is a very great help to have this habit fixed before writing is
taught. There is no haste about the child's learning to write. That is
easily and quickly accomplished when the proper time comes. The
difficult thing to do is, very fortunately, the thing the mother is best
fitted to accomplish, namely, to create in the child the ability to
interpret speech by means of the eye, and the habit of expecting to get
ideas by watching the face of a speaker.
With these ideas in mind there has been careful avoidance in this
little book of any suggestion that the mother should be anxious about
the speech development of the child before five years of age. If she has
the patience and the time to follow the directions given, she will have
done her child a very great service; the greatest that lies within her
power; and she will have laid the foundation for a more rapid and better
development of speech than would have been possible without her
preliminary training.
Not every mother will find it possible to carry out all the suggestions
offered in this little book, but no one should feel discouraged on that
account. It seemed best to offer too many suggestions rather than too
few, because these pages may fall into the hands of some mothers whose
situation is such that full advantage can be taken of every idea here
given. Presence of too much matter in the little book will not destroy
its usefulness in cases where only a portion can be applied, whereas the
lack of some of the ideas might limit its value in certain instances.
No one should give up in despair just because it is not possible to do
all that is here suggested. Something, at least, can be found here which
it is possible to do that will help very much.
Sometimes, through a false sense of shame, or through ignorance of the
possibilities open to a deaf child, mothers have refused to admit that
their children were deaf, or to allow anything to be done for them,
until very valuable time has been lost. This is unfair to the child, and
very wrong. A mother should have only pity for the deaf child and
eagerness to aid him to overcome his handicap so far as possible. Delay
in frankly facing the facts and in taking all possible measures to
develop the remaining faculties will in the end only increase the
mother's shame and add to it the pangs of remorse.
In a little book written to guide physicians in advising parents of deaf
children, I said:
"The situation of a deaf child differs very much, from an educational
standpoint, from that of the little hearing child. Two hours a day
playing educational games in a kindergarten is as much as is usually
given, or is needful, for the little hearing child up to six or seven
years of age; and his mental development and success in after life will
not be seriously endangered if even that is omitted and he does not
begin to go to school until he is eight or nine. The hearing child of
eight who has never been in school and cannot read or write has,
nevertheless, without conscious effort, mastered the two most important
educational tasks in life. He has learned to speak and has acquired the
greater part of his working vocabulary. In other words, although he has
never been across the threshold of a school, his education is well
advanced for his years and mental development.
"The situation of the uninstructed deaf child of eight is very
different. The task which it has taken the hearing child eight years to
accomplish, the deaf child of eight has not even begun. He cannot speak
a word; he does not even know that there is such a thing as a word. He
is eight years behind his hearing brother, and even if he starts now,
unless some means can be found for aiding him to overtake his brother
educationally, he will be only eight years old in education when he is
sixteen years of age. And when he is sixteen, the psychological period
will have passed for acquiring what he should have learned when he was
eight. The fact that the child is deaf does not exempt him from the
inexorable laws of mental psychology and heredity. In the development of
the human mind there is a certain period when all conditions are
favorable for the acquisition of speech and language. Unnumbered
generations of ancestors acquired speech and language at that stage of
their mental development, and this little deaf descendant's mind obeys
the law of inherited tendencies.
"If the speech and language-learning period, from two years of age to
ten, is allowed to pass unimproved, the task of learning them later is
rendered unnecessarily difficult.
"Therefore, in the case of the little deaf child, the years from two to
ten are crucial, and of far greater importance than the same period in
the case of the hearing child."
Even though the child be totally deaf from birth, he can nevertheless be
taught to speak and to understand when others speak to him. He can be
given the same education that he would be capable of mastering if he
could hear. The mother need not be despairing nor heart-broken. A
prompt, brave, and intelligent facing of the situation will result in
making the child one to be proud of and to lean upon.
JOHN D. WRIGHT.
1 Mount Morris Park, West, New York City.
February, 1915.
WHAT THE MOTHER OF A DEAF CHILD OUGHT TO KNOW
(_Mothers are strongly advised to read the Preface_)
I
FACING THE FACTS
While deafness is a serious misfortune, it is neither a sin, nor a
disgrace, to be ashamed of. It is a handicap, to be sure, but one to be
bravely and cheerfully faced, for it does not destroy the chances for
happiness and success. It is cause for neither discouragement nor
despair. It will demand patient devotion and courageous effort to
overcome the disadvantage, but what mother is not willing to show these
in large measure for her child when the future holds assurance of
comfort and usefulness?
The earlier that the facts are known and squarely faced, the better. It
is always wiser in life to prepare for the worst and gratefully accept
the best, than to refuse to acknowledge the possibility of the worst
until it is too late to remedy it, or at least to reduce it to its
lowest terms.
When a mother first suspects that her child's hearing is not perfectly
normal, what should she do? Of course, first of all, the best available
ear specialist should be consulted at once in order to determine whether
the cause can be removed and normal hearing restored. Sometimes,
however, the specialists are uncertain of the outcome, and sometimes
their hopes are not realized. In the meantime, precious days and weeks
are passing in which something could be done for the little one
educationally, without in any way interfering with the medical efforts
at relief. The two things can be, and should be, carried on
simultaneously. If normal hearing is restored no harm has been done by
the educational training; in fact, the development of the child has been
advanced. On the other hand, if the hopes that were entertained are
disappointed, then precious and irrecoverable time has not been lost.
The title presupposes that the mother has already accepted the fact that
her child's hearing is not perfect, and, for the sake of the child, it
is to be hoped that this knowledge came to her very promptly after the
occurrence of the deafness.
One would naturally expect a mother, of her own accord, to carefully
test all the senses of her child by many simple and repeated exercises
during the first few months of its life. The many cases, however, in
which deafness on the part of a child has not been recognized, or at
least not acknowledged, by the mother till the third, fourth, or even
fifth year, show a strange neglect of a highly desirable investigation,
and a natural unwillingness to accept a truth, the possibility of which
must certainly have occurred to her long before.
If she could only realize that she need not feel downcast and
heavy-hearted by reason of her little one's imperfect hearing; if she
could only know that she need not look forward to a life for him
different from that of other children; if she could understand that
training and education can enable him to overcome to an extraordinary
degree the disadvantage of deafness, she would set about the task with
cheerfulness and hope, and if she knew that the sooner she began, the
better it would be for the little one, she would not stubbornly refuse
for so long to acknowledge even the possibility of deafness.
II
HOW SHALL THE MOTHER BEGIN HER PART OF THE WORK?
First of all, something like an inventory should be taken of the
faculties possessed by the child which he can use in working out his
problem. Has he good sight, normal smell, taste, muscular sense, and
memory? To what extent is his hearing impaired? Is there any possibility
of restoring it to normal acuteness, or of improving it, or of
preventing any further impairment?
The completeness with which these questions can be answered depends, to
a considerable extent, on his age and his physical condition. We will
suppose that he is about fifteen months old and in good bodily
condition. If he is older, the same tests would be used to begin with,
though we could at once pass on to more complicated and difficult ones
that cannot as yet be used with the fifteen-months-old baby.
First, with regard to sight. We wish to know if he can distinguish
reasonably small objects at reasonable distances; whether he can see
moderately small things at short distances; whether the angle of his
vision is normal. In other words, whether his range and angle of vision
are sufficient for all ordinary purposes.
If he can recognize his father or mother or brothers and sisters at a
distance of a hundred feet he can see far enough for all practical
purposes. If he readily finds a small object like a pin or a small black
bead when dropped on the floor, his sight is sharp enough at short range
to serve his purposes. If his attention can be attracted by waving a
hand or a little flag or a flower fifty or sixty degrees on either side
of the direction in which he is looking, that is, two-thirds of the way
to the side of his head, his angle of vision is sufficiently wide. If he
can pick out from seven balls of worsted of the seven primary
colors--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet--the ball
that matches another of the same color, he is at least not color-blind
and has a sufficient sense of color for the ordinary purposes of life.
It may be necessary to wait till eighteen months for a satisfactory
color test. Color blindness, when present, is usually most apparent in a
failure to distinguish between red and green, these two widely differing
colors seeming to produce the same impression upon the color-blind eye.
The child will be just as likely to choose a red ball to match the green
one in his hand as to select another red ball. But repeated tests should
be made before accepting color blindness as a fact, since sometimes the
brain can be educated to discriminate between red and green even when
the impressions have not the normal degree of difference.
The tests for taste, smell, muscular sense, touch, and memory cannot be
made with much thoroughness or satisfaction till two years of age,
though observation will show a recognition by taste and smell of that
which is agreeable and that which is disagreeable. Accurate tests of
hearing cannot be made till the child is three or four, but it is
possible when he is twelve months old to determine whether the hearing
is normal or is seriously impaired, and it is very desirable that this
should be done.
The expression "seriously impaired," when applied to the hearing of a
little child, must be given an entirely different interpretation than it
would have if used with reference to an adult who had previously had
normal hearing. A degree of impairment that would be unimportant in an
adult is a very serious matter in the case of a child. This is because
the ear is the natural teacher of speech and language. If the sounds of
speech are not clearly heard the imitation of them will always be
imperfect, and the acquisition of language will be impeded. If deafness
is so great that spoken words are not heard at all, then the child will
not learn to speak and to understand when spoken to unless specially
taught. A much slighter degree of deafness will prevent the proper
acquisition of speech and language than would in later life prevent the
comprehension of conversation in a familiar language. As even the child
of fifteen months would benefit from some modifications of the ordinary
treatment of a baby, if his hearing was not normally acute, it is to his
advantage to have the fact of his deafness known at once by those in
charge of him.
It is not as easy as it might seem to the inexperienced to determine
even approximately the situation of a fifteen-months-old baby with
respect to its hearing. Our interest here is, of course, in the tests of
hearing that do not require special apparatus and special training. In
the case of a child less than two years of age we must rely upon merely
attracting his attention by various sounds, judging the effect upon him
by his expression and actions. We cannot, at that age, establish a
system of responses, nor expect him to imitate the sounds he hears.
Sounds should be used for testing that disturb only the air, and are
not sufficiently low and powerful to set in vibration the floor, chair,
or any other object with which he may be in contact. Deaf children
rapidly become abnormally sensitive to vibrations, which are to them
what noises are to us. A rather smooth, not too shrill, whistle is one
excellent sound to use. Not a fluttering whistle like the postman's, nor
a heavy tone like an organ pipe or bass horn. Clapping the hands is a
good initial test of a crude nature; then a moderate whistle, varying
the pitch, for sometimes high sounds are perceived, but not low ones, or
vice versa. Then a bell, such as a small table bell, the telephone,
electric door bell, etc. Lastly, the human voice in various pitches,
volumes, distances, and vowels. Little by little it can be determined
whether the child hears all the sounds, and if not, then which, if any,
he perceives. A totally deaf child may often deceive the investigator by
turning his head at the critical moment, apparently in response to the
sound that was made, while, on the other hand, a child very slightly
deaf, or not deaf at all, may completely ignore the sounds made for the
purpose of attracting his attention. Therefore, it takes time and
repeated tests under varying environments to gradually eliminate
possible errors and coincidences.
It must be remembered that the intensity with which a sound affects the
ear varies inversely as the square of the distance from the ear to the
source of the sound. That is to say, if exactly the same sound is
repeated at half the distance, the intensity with which it reaches the
ear is four times as great as before, and if the distance is quartered,
the intensity is sixteen times as great. In other words, if "ah" is
spoken with a certain loudness eight inches from the child's ear, and
then again with exactly the same pitch and volume only two inches from
his ear, it will be sixteen times as loud to him as it was the first
time.
These simple tests will serve to determine whether the child has, or has
not, a normal acuteness of hearing. They will not serve to determine
with any accuracy the degree of impairment, if it is found that the
hearing is impaired at all. More thorough tests will have to be
postponed till the child is two years old or more. But the moment that
impaired hearing is suspected, the best available ear specialist should
be consulted in order to determine whether the cause can be removed, or
measures taken to prevent a progressive increase in deafness.
The visit to the otologist should be repeated at intervals of not more
than eight or ten months, even where there is no question of treatment,
in order that any change in the physical condition of the organs may be
promptly detected.
III
HOW SHALL THE MOTHER GET INTO COMMUNICATION WITH HER DEAF CHILD?
Let it be assumed that when the child is fifteen months old it is fairly
well established that his hearing is somewhat below normal. Between
fifteen months and two years of age all that is said in this section
will apply equally to the child who is _feared_ to be _totally_ deaf and
to one who is known to possess some sound perception, though not a
normal degree of hearing. For, until he is old enough to respond to more
complete and accurate tests, we must not give up the idea that he may
have a sufficient remnant of hearing to be of great assistance to him in
the acquisition of speech and language, if it is only developed and
trained.