What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know | Page 3

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,