124 social skills
In the community
Outside their own homes and
immediate families, children
I am glad to have your
help keeping bugs off the
bean plants.
see how older children and
adults talk, play, and work
with each other. This is how
children learn ways to relate
to people outside their families.
And in the wider world that opens
to them, children learn to practice
different responses to situations and
different ways of doing things. They develop
social skills as they discover their own
strengths and weaknesses.
Mr. Lopes,
which bugs
are the
bad ones?
Deafness makes it harder to learn social skills
Children who can hear learn a lot about
the world by listening to what goes on
around them. Many of the social skills
they learn are never taught to them
directly, but develop as they listen
to other people talking with each
other. Children who cannot hear
miss a lot of this information.
Ramani! Put that back
— it’s not yours!
Oh, that’s fine,
she can have it.
No, she
should know
better!
A child who cannot hear well
often finds it harder than
other children to learn how
to behave with other people.
She does not understand the
behavior she sees and the
reasons why people behave a
certain way.
Ramani wants a banana, but
This is true especially when a deaf
child and her parents are not able to
she doesn’t understand that her
mother must pay for it first.
communicate well with each other.
When she misbehaves it may be difficult to explain how she should
act. She may become frustrated and misbehave even more. A child who
misbehaves a lot may get left alone by other people.
A deaf child needs extra help learning how to communicate, how to
cooperate with others, and how to control her behavior.
Helping Children Who Are Deaf (2004)