Deciding what to do for a deaf child
DEAFNESS
Not all children with hearing loss are the same. All need love, understanding, and
help learning to communicate. But different children need different kinds of help, to
communicate in whatever way works best for them. We must adapt our methods to the
needs of the particular child and to the realities of the community where he lives.
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• If a child is only partly deaf, sometimes we can help her to hear more clearly (see
p. 262), to understand more speech, and perhaps learn to speak.
• A child who has no hearing at all usually cannot be helped to hear. But if he
became deaf after he began to speak, perhaps he can be helped to ‘read’
people’s lips and to improve his speech.
• If the child was born deaf and has never heard speech, learning to lip read and
speak is always very slow and difficult, and is usually not very successful. It is
better to help the child learn to communicate in whatever ways work best for her:
first with her face, body, arms and hands, then possibly adding pictures, reading
and writing, finger spelling, and as much lip reading and speech as she is able to
learn.
• If the child comes from an area where there are many deaf people who
communicate with each other in a national sign language, it is probably best
to have people in the deaf community help teach the child and her family their
language. That way, she can learn to communicate with deaf people as fully and
well as hearing people communicate with each other.
• But if the child lives in a small village where there are few deaf people, none of
whom know the national sign language, learning that language may not help the
child much. Probably it makes more sense for her to learn ways to communicate
as best she can with those who can hear. Again, this probably means a
combination of methods, based on the signs and gestures people already use in
the village. With these, the child can also use pictures, and later perhaps, reading
and writing.
• Remember, most children with hearing loss can learn quickly. But some may
have brain damage or disabilities that affect their ability to learn or to control their
hands, lips, or voices. You will need to figure out ways to help these children
communicate in whatever way they can: with sets of pictures, head movements,
or eye movements.
Note: Some children who hear perfectly well do not develop the ability to
speak. Some children with cerebral palsy do not control their mouth or tongue
movement well enough to speak. Other children are mentally slow and may
be very late in learning to speak, or never learn. Other children are intelligent
in many ways, but for some reason cannot speak. For all of these children, we
need to look for ways to help them communicate as best they can.
CP
disabled village children