CONTENTS

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.