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To Be Visual or Not to Be Visual? The
Hard of Hearing Child
By Roger Carver
The
Deaf Children's Society has had a significant increase in
the number of families with hard of hearing children who signed
up for our services. It happened despite "conventional
wisdom" in which DCS wasn't "supposed" to work
with hard of hearing children. Some might even ask: "how
can an ASL-oriented and Deaf-centred program support families
with hard of hearing children?" The answer is simply
this: young hard of hearing children have needs similar to
those of young deaf children and stand to benefit greatly
from visual language learning strategies. Infants and toddlers,
regardless of their hearing status, are primarily visual learners
by nature. It may not have been a well-known fact, but DCS
has successfully worked with families with hard of hearing
children for years from the beginning. We do not require such
families to learn ASL (although they are encouraged to do
so) and can provide guidance in auditory-oral training to
these families.
Philip
Garcia, in his recent book, Toddler Talk, makes a persuasive
case for young children with normal hearing to use signs from
the American Sign Language (ASL) first before developing speech,
saying that it gives them a tremendous head start in terms
of language and cognitive development. He
cites research evidence pointing to superior linguistic and
academic functioning in children who were exposed to sign
language from an early age. In their 1978 review of research
on visual-verbal development in young children, J.L. Debes
and C.M. Williams argue that visual cognitive
development occurs more quickly in infants than its auditory
counterpart and that visual stimulation is richer and more
complex than auditory stimulation during the first few years
of the child's life.
I
recognize it is important not to neglect the development of
residual hearing through auditory-oral training and of speech
and speechreading skills in hard of hearing children. I also
recognize that there are some who may not even require sign
language. However, each child must be regarded as unique.
The audiogram does not present a complete picture of the child;
it should not even be the determining factor in communication
choices. Rather, the ability of the child's family to provide
full communication support and to follow the child's lead
in terms of communication are the more crucial factors. It
is important to make sure that all the communication tools
are available to any child, regardless of his/her hearing
ability.
More
and more parents of young hard of hearing children are now
beginning to understand and realize that they could lose valuable
developmental time by neglecting their children's visual cognitive
development for the first few years in order to develop an
auditory-oral language. They have come to appreciate the fact
that a visual language such as ASL effectively fills in the
language gap by accelerating the language development process
during these crucial years, and that it is a valuable tool
in the subsequent development of speech and auditory skills.
Many Deaf parents do have hard of hearing children, and, despite
the fact that these children's first language is ASL, many
of them
have gone on to develop excellent auditory-oral skills.
ASL,
far from being a detriment to young hard of hearing children,
actually strengthens and enriches their communication abilities.
It actually enhances their self-concept as they are able to
express their feelings and thoughts more clearly to others.
Many parents of hard of hearing children have reported
to us their feelings of frustration, as well as those of their
children's, when they are not fully able to understand what
the children are saying, and vice versa. This frustration
can lead to feelings of alienation and poor self-esteem on
the parts of these children. In turn, it develops into a denial
of their hearing problem and an identity crisis.
The
typical hard of hearing child, due to the stress of trying
to understand oral communication and communicating with impatient
persons, develops a habit of pretending to understand everything
being said to him/her, giving rise to the illusion in his/her
parents and teachers that the child is doing "fine".
My wife, who has been hard of hearing since birth, recalls
having been a "good actor" who had everyone fooled,
including even her parents. Yet this kind of deception only
masks problems for hard of hearing children as they struggle
to keep up in a hearing world which is largely insensitive
to
their needs. In fact, it makes them worse as hearing persons
tend to take for granted that these children could understand
everything and function normally. The hard of hearing child
subsequently becomes more and more reluctant to admit to having
a hearing problem. It can lead to serious identity problems
and social isolation. It has been often said that the typical
hard of hearing person is more handicapped that the typical
Deaf person. I've heard from quite a few hard of hearing persons
how they suffered through their formative years as primarily
oral communicators and how they felt incomplete and incompetent
until they learned to sign.
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