of discussion in the family circle. Do not let him withdraw or feel shut
out. This will take a good deal of effort and self-denial and patience,
but in the long run it will repay the parents. Failure to do this will
eventually bring sorrow to all concerned. Train the other children to do
their share of this. Insist upon their telling the deaf one their plans
and their doings. Unless some care is taken he will see the others going
without knowing where or why, he will sometimes lose pleasures because
he did not hear the talk that was going on around him and no one thought
to tell him. This has a tendency to make him bitter and unsocial.
From the very beginning of spoken intercourse with the deaf child the
greatest care should be taken to speak NATURALLY to him. Avoid entirely
all exaggeration of lip movement and mouth opening. Speak a little
slowly, perhaps, and always distinctly, but never with facial
contortions and waving hands. The aim of his oral training is to enable
him to understand the ordinary speech of people when they speak to him,
and to do this he requires an immense amount of practice, just as the
hearing child requires a great deal of practice for years before he can
understand what people are saying to him. If you speak to him in a
different way from that employed when speaking to others he will learn
to understand that, but not your ordinary manner of speaking. He will
also imitate it himself. The Chinaman speaks and understands only
"Pidgin" English because only "Pidgin" English has been used in
communicating with him. If people had spoken to the Chinaman as they do
to other people he would have gradually acquired good English.
So it is with the deaf child. If you want him to gradually learn to
understand the ordinary intercourse of life, you must exercise him in it
for years. You must not expect him to get much at first, any more than
you expect the baby to understand to start with. But each month he will
gain more, and by the time he is sixteen or seventeen he will have very
nearly overtaken his hearing brother. But if you always address him with
a yawning mouth and flopping tongue and lips, and use deaf-mute English
to him, he will progress in his understanding and use of that, but it is
not what you wish him to acquire. Be patient, be gentle, be untiring and
unremitting in your efforts, but BE NATURAL. _Keep your eyes on his eyes
and speak only when his gaze is upon your face._
Before closing I ought to say that (more is the pity) there are many
persons who live by trading upon the ignorance and credulity of the
unfortunate. The deaf and the friends of the deaf fall an easy prey to
the advertisements of quack remedies, ear drums, etc., that are always
useless and sometimes actually dangerous. The American Medical
Association has had the courage to issue a pamphlet in which these fake
cures are described and exposed, and every deaf person, and parent of a
deaf child, should have one of these pamphlets. The title is "Deafness
Cure Fakes," and can be obtained by writing to the American Medical
Association, 535 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois.
Any one who has read these pages will easily see that the suggestions
are all aimed to secure for the deaf a treatment similar in kind, though
somewhat different in degree, to that accorded the normal hearing
person. The tendency has been to differentiate the deaf too much from
the hearing. By adopting the procedure of pure oralism, effectively
applied under _real oral conditions_, uncontaminated, during the
educational period from five to twenty years of age, by finger spelling
or signs, the deaf will be far more fully restored to a normal position
in the social and industrial world than they can ever be by the silent
methods at present so largely used during their most impressionable
years.
XXVII
SOME NOTS
Do not be downcast.
Deafness does not, necessarily, bring dumbness.
Do not consider the deaf child as different from other children.
Do not cease talking to him.
Do not speak with exaggerated facial movements.
Do not exempt him from the duties and tasks and obedience properly
demanded of all children.
Do not let him grow selfish.
Do not let him grow indifferent.
Do not be in haste.
Do not show impatience.