"When you consent, consent cordially;When you refuse, refuse finally;When you punish, punish good-naturedly."
"When you consent, consent cordially;When you refuse, refuse finally;When you punish, punish good-naturedly."
"When you consent, consent cordially;
When you refuse, refuse finally;
When you punish, punish good-naturedly."
And now that the little one is two or three years old, it may be well to say a few words about his general training in character and habits. There is a strong, and a not unnatural tendency to maintain an attitude toward the deaf child that differs from that maintained by sensible mothers toward their other children. They often set up a different standard of conduct and of obligation for the afflicted child. His brothers and sisters are taught to always defer to his wishes; even to the extent of yielding to improper and selfish demands on his part, and conceding that they have no rights where he is concerned. He is not required to perform the little duties demanded of the other children. He is given privileges which the others do not, and which no one of them, including himself, should enjoy. He grows tyrannical,domineering, and selfish. The mother says: "Poor little chap; he has trouble enough, we must do all in our power to make up to him for what he misses by reason of his deafness." This is, however, a shortsighted, and really a cruel policy. It lays up much misery for his future, and in the end proves a serious handicap to one who needs to have as few additional difficulties as possible. Though it may seem hard-hearted, it is really kinder to put him on the same basis as any other child. Make him do everything possible for himself. Insist upon his being independent; dressing himself as soon as he is able, buttoning his own shoes, and performing all the little self-help acts that the wise mother demands of all her children. Make no distinction in the treatment accorded him. Ask the same services, reward right actions and punish wrongdoing as impartially as if he was not deaf, only being sure that he clearly connects the punishment with the wrong act. This, in the case of a deaf child, requires a little more care than with ahearing child. Train him to be thoughtful for the comfort of others, and respectful of their rights, just as you insist that the others observe his rights. He cannot be argued with, object lessons and example must be the means of teaching him manners and morals.
Between the ages of two and four years all the games and exercises heretofore described can continue to be used, together with others increasingly difficult and complicated, as the child's mind develops and his powers of observation, attention, and memory increase. Take very special care that he learns all the childhood games that other children know and enjoy. Devote yourself more to him in this respect than you would in the case of another child. Encourage the neighbors' children to come and play with him by making it especially pleasant for them. Teach them yourself to play "Hide the Thimble," "Hide and Seek," "Drop the Handkerchief," "Going to Jerusalem," "Old Maid," "Bean Bag." Follow the Leader is an excellent game by which to teach watchfulness and imitation. Cat and Mouse,Hot Potato, Ring on a String, are all games that can be played by groups and cultivate quickness. Ping Pong Football is excellent as a lung developer. That is the choosing of sides and trying to blow a ping pong ball between the goal posts formed by a pair of salt shakers at opposite ends of a table. Or blowing a feather across a sheet by opposing sides. Encourage good, romping, noisy games in which the children naturally laugh and shout. They are the best of voice-developing exercises, and by such means, and his long-distance shouting and calling to his playmates, the little hearing child gains much of his lung and voice power. In all his games, as in all his other activities, take veryspecialpains to talk to him, using the regulation expressions and training him to watch for the "It's your turn," or "Now, Tom," "Ready," "Whose turn is it?" etc., etc.
If the foregoing suggestions have been carefully carried out since he was twelve months old, he will long ago have arrived unconsciously at the knowledge that all things, and all actions, and all feelings, have names, and that the mouth always makes the same sequence of movements for the same thing. In the babbling exercises recommended, he will gradually come to utter many of the vowel and consonant sounds of his native language; especially those that are made by the lips, and by evident positions of the tongue. Those sounds that require hidden positions of the organs, such as the sound of C and K in cat and ark, or G in go and dog, or ng in long, he is unlikely to have stumbled upon. These can be taught when the proper time comes, but their absence for the present need cause no anxiety. In fact, up to the time when he is three and a half or four years old, the matter of speaking is not one to be much troubled about. If the conception of language has been given him through lip-reading, and some ability to understand the necessary language of his daily life, his future success is assured.
Till the child is at least four years old, the proper place for him is at home, and if he must be sent to one of the large public schools for the deaf it should not be till he is five or even six years of age.
But during these years the mother can gain much knowledge that will help her by visiting as many schools for the deaf as possible. There are about a hundred and fifty such schools in the United States and eight in Canada. They vary in size, in character, and in methods of instruction employed. There are public boarding schools, and public day schools, free to the resident of the state, or city, in which they are located. There are private boarding and day schools, maintained by charity, or by the tuition fees. Some of each class are oral schools; that is, they employ only speech methods ofinstruction, without any signs or finger spelling. Others are called "Combined" schools; that is, they permit, and in some exercises encourage, the use of finger spelling and gestural signs, while they also give some instruction by the speech method. There are sectarian and non-sectarian schools, both oral and combined.
A very considerable number of schools for the deaf in the United States and Canada still use manual, or silent, methods of instruction, at least in part. But the speech, or oral, method is steadily growing in popularity, and gradually supplanting manual spelling and gestural signs. The time will certainly come when the public will be too intelligent to any longer tolerate the use between teacher and pupil, or between any employee and the pupils, in a school for the deaf, any system of manual communication.
Every deaf child, no matter if born totally deaf and of a low order of intelligence, can be given as much education by the exclusive use of the speech method as it can by any manual, or silent, method or by a combination of the speech and the silent method.This is not the mere expression of an opinion, but the statement of a fact; a fact firmly established by actual results in state institutions where, unfortunately, the law requires the admission of pupils too poorly equipped intellectually to belong in a school with normally bright children. In addition to acquiring all the education of which his mental endowment makes him capable, he can be taught to speak and to understand when spoken to. The degree of perfection attainable depends upon the ability of the child, the skill of the teaching, and especially uponthe environmentin which the child passes its formative educational years. The probability of the child's acquiring a maximum proficiency in speaking and in understanding others when they speak, is lessened in direct proportion to the extent to which he is permitted to use the silent or manual means of communication. In the so-called "combined" schools, theenvironmentis largely manual. Avisit to the playgrounds, the baseball fields, the shops, dining rooms, and dormitories of "combined" schools will disclose the pupils using silent means of communication, not only between themselves,but with those in charge of them. They do not think in spoken forms, but in finger spelling and signs.The powerful influence of environment in those schools isagainstthe acquisition of the speech and lip-reading habit.
The mother who has faithfully followed the suggestions offered in the foregoing pages will be able to appreciate what she sees on visiting the schools, and will gain much more from such visits than one who is entirely inexperienced in the problem. Every mother should make it her business to visit at least onepurely oralschool, in order that she may make herself thoroughly intelligent on what may be expected of a deaf child.
Unfortunately, pure oral schools are not as plentiful as "combined" schools, but it will well repay any parent to make a journey, evenacross the continent, if necessary, in order to study the workings of some good, purely oral, school. Do not be satisfied with a visit to the nearest "combined" school.
You owe it to your childto make yourself thoroughly intelligent as to thepossibilitiesopen to a deaf child. You will not be intelligent till you have personally visited some goodpurely oralschool.
The number, character, location, etc., of the schools are constantly changing. A descriptive list of all schools corrected to date will be gladly supplied by the author to any one requesting it.
Up to this point it has been assumed that deafness occurred before the age of two years, and before the child had begun to speak. In cases where, through accident or illness, impairment of hearing has come after the child has begun to talk, the mother should bend all her efforts upon keeping the speech of her child. The younger the child, the more difficult is the task. Without the greatest vigilance and increasing attention, the speech of a little child who has become deaf will fade rapidly away, until it is lost entirely, and must be artificially recreated when he is old enough to grasp the complicated ideas involved in speech teaching to the deaf. But by persistently encouraging himto talk, and never, even for a day, allowing him to lapse into silence, andby not accepting careless and faulty utterance, but pretending not to understand till the child speaks distinctly and correctly, the natural speech, which was his before deafness occurred, can be preserved, and the speech habit thoroughly fixed. If, by good luck, the little one has learned to read even a simple primer before becoming deaf, it will be much easier to prevent a loss of speech. For this reading can be made an excuse for frequently using his speech. But when the child cannot read, the mother must depend entirely upon inducing him to talk to her, refusing to give him anything, or grant his request, till he asks for it in good spoken form; showing him pictures, playing games, frolicking with him; doing everything that a mother's love and ingenuity can suggest, to keep him talking all day long.
The tendency of the child will be to drop, or slur, the final syllables of the words; to leave off the sound of finaled; to lose the sharpnessof thes; to blur thel; and sometimes to lose the sound ofkandc. But, if he has learned to read, by pointing to these letters in the words he has spoken imperfectly, he will correct his own mistake. Prompt and increasing attention to the little fellow's speech during the first year after deafness occurs will usually serve to fix correct habits for life.
All that has been said about training the little deaf child to read the lip movements and associate them with the names of things and of actions, will apply also to the little boy who has suddenly been made deaf, after speech has been learned. Be careful that he is looking at you always when you speak to him or reply to some question he has asked, but speak just as you would have done before he became deaf. You may have to repeat things to him very often at first, but do not permit any sign of impatience in your face. Do not let him get the idea that it is a hardship to talk to him. Remember that you are changing his manner of understanding speech over to another way, and that his present and future happiness depends very greatly on the thoroughness and promptness with which it is done. In all dealings with a deaf child the mother should remember that the child draws his impressions of the character and the feelings of those about him from the expression of their faces, and many almost unconscious little acts and gestures. Avoid very carefully any appearance of being impatient, or bored, or contemptuous at his failures. Try to understand the difficulties under which he is working to maintain his place in the world. Do not humor his whims, or spoil him by indulgence, yet treat him with the greatest consideration and fairness. Above all, be cheerful and, at least apparently, interested in his doings and sayings.
The question of what is "school age" for a deaf child is answered very differently by different people. Most of the state institutions for the deaf in the United States, Canada, and Europe will not admit children younger than six years of age. Seven years is still the age of admission in some institutions, but the tendency is to lower the age limit. In some schools children of five are admitted, in a few those as young as four, and in two or three small schools babies of two and three are received. Any statement here must, therefore, be taken as only the expression of the author's opinion, resulting from more than twenty-five years of active teaching, combined with wide observation.
It would appear that, where home conditions are not bad, either physically or morally, theproper place for the little deaf child till he is nearly, or quite, five, is with his mother. Very much can be done for the little one before he is five to prepare him for the instruction which should be given at that age, but it is possible for the mother to do what is necessary, and even the simplest home conditions are preferable for very little children to the institutional environment. It is impossible, in a school of from one hundred to five hundred pupils, to create a real home environment, such as the very little child should have. It is really a pity that the child of five should have to be placed in the institutional environment as it at present exists. If the legislative bodies of our states, and the gentlemen who manage the schools, could only be induced to adopt the cottage plan of housing in small units, the disadvantages of institutional life would be enormously reduced.
It should be possible for every taxpayer in every state who has a deaf child and who has not the means or the wish to place that child in a private school, to have the child educated in a free public school as completely by the speech method as his hearing children are educated by that method. He should not be compelled to send his child out of the state or else subject him to the influence of signs and finger spelling, with the probability that he will leave school a deaf mute. Unfortunately, in many states, this is not possible at present. But if the parents of deaf children would organize themselves into "Parents' Associations" and send representatives to the governors and legislative committees; and arrange for demonstrations by orally educated deaf children frompure oral schools; and carry on an active campaign of enlightenment and of agitation, the present state of affairs would soon cease to exist.
I wish to make an urgent plea for the energetic efforts of all parents of deaf children to improve the speech-teaching conditions in their respective localities. At present, very far from all that is possible is being done to give deaf children a ready command of spoken English, and a working ability to understand when spoken to. The persons who have the most at stake in this matter, and who should be most active and persistent in demanding from the school authorities and legislatures better facilities for the acquisition of speech by deaf children, are the parents of those children. In each locality these parents should organize into "Parents' Associations." These local associations should, in turn, be connected by a statewide organization composed of representatives from each local association. These state organizations could then be combined by representation in a national organization of all the parents of deaf children in the United States. Such complete organization once effected, the reasonable demands made in the interests of better results in speech teaching would quickly be complied with by the respective schools and the legislatures or boards of directors that control them. The associations could induce their local papers to aid in a campaign to educate public opinion by printing facts concerning what is done elsewhere. If all parents of deaf children only knew what might be accomplished, and were so organized as to permit them to present their wishes forcibly to those able to change conditions, the deaf child would quickly come into his own.
Let some parent in each locality make it his or her business to get the names and addresses of all other parents of deaf children in the vicinity. Induce them to come together some evening and choose a chairman and an executive committee of three. Let these four people make a point of studying the education of the deaf as conducted in the most advanced communities. Let the executive committees of the several local associations get together once or twice a year for a sort of state convention of parents. Let them invite leading educators to address them, and let them appoint committees to visit schools in other states where different methods are employed. If such a movement was once started there would be found plenty of subject-matter for discussion, and plenty of opportunities to work for a betterment of conditions. The author of this little book would be glad to give any aid in his power to such a movement, and to place the results of his twenty-five years of experience at the disposal of any parent, or parents' organization.
The first efforts should be directed to inducing, or compelling, the so-called "Combined Schools" for the deaf throughout the United States to wholly segregate at least a small oral department from the manually taught pupils. The orally taught pupils should never come in contact during their school life, either in the shops, dining rooms, playgrounds, or schoolrooms, with those pupils with whom finger spelling and signs are employed. All employees, whether superintendents, teachers, supervisors, teachers of trades, or servants, who have to do with the orally taught pupils should becompelledto use only speech and lip reading (and writing, if absolutely necessary) under penalty of dismissal for failing to do so. Only by means of such segregation, and the enforcement of speech as a universal medium of communication, can the appropriations for oral work be made really productive of good results in what are now called "Combined Schools." This can be done on a small scale at the beginning, with the little entering beginners. Then if all beginners are put into this oral department it will gradually grow at the expense of the manual department, until, after a period of eight or ten years, the entire school will have become oral.
This is the only method of procedure by which satisfactory results in speech teaching for practical purposes can be obtained in return for the generous appropriations that the states make. It has been fully demonstrated by actual operation in the state of Pennsylvania, where the largest school for the deaf in the world has in this manner been changed from a "Combined School" to a pure oral school.
Allthe deaf children in the State of Massachusetts are now taught wholly by the oralmethod. If that polyglot and heterogeneous population can be so treated, there is no state in the Union where the same could not be done if there were the desire and the ambition to do it.
In many states deaf children have been, either by definite statement, or by tacit understanding, exempted from the enforcement of the compulsory education law. This is all wrong. They need the protection of that excellent law even more than the hearing child, and if the law for compulsory education does not, in fact, apply to them, it should at once be amended to do so.
The parents are the ones most interested in this matter, and it is through their efforts alone that improvement can be brought about. In Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Missouri, and California, free public oral day schools have been established. This movement has reached its highest development in Wisconsin and Michigan. In Wisconsin there are twenty-four such schools scattered throughout the state, and in Michigan fourteen. New schools are opened by the Board of Education under prescribed conditions upon the request of a certain number of parents of deaf children. Such a law should be on the statute books of every state, and will be when the parents of deaf children organize and demand it.
When the little child that has been deaf from infancy is five years of age, he should be placed in apurely oral schoolfor the deaf, if such a thing is possible.
The child who has become deaf by illness or accident after speech has been acquired, should be placed under experienced instruction by the speech methodat once.
To quote once more from my little book of suggestions to physicians:
"If the proper school for the little hearing child of five did not happen to exist in his immediate neighborhood, no one would think of insisting upon the necessity of sending the little one away to a distant boarding school. But that is what must be done in the case of the little deaf child, if precious and irrecoverable years are not to be lost. It is often a difficultmatter to persuade a mother to sacrifice her own personal happiness and comfort in having the little child with her, and to look far enough into the future to see that a true and unselfish love for the child requires her to entrust him to the care of others during those early and crucial years."
If no oral day or boarding school is available near at hand, the mother should have the far-sighted love that is unselfish, and the courage to part with her little five-year-old child during the months of the school year, and place him in some one of the distant schools where he can live and be taught in a purely oral environment. There are two alternatives to this, each of which is sometimes attempted, but both are undesirable. First the mother not infrequently attempts to have her child educated in the schools for hearing children. This is very unsatisfactory and even dangerous, for if persisted in it results in wholly inadequate progress, uneven development, bad speech, irretrievable loss of time, and often in a complete nervous breakdown. This may not come for some years, but the nervous system, once undermined by the excessive strain of trying to keep up under impossible conditions, can never be fully repaired. Here is what apartiallydeaf woman writes of her experience as a child:
"When I was three and one-half years old scarlet fever left me almost totally deaf. My father was a physician. He was urged to send me to a school for the deaf, but his medical training told him that what was needed was association with speaking children, if I were to retain my speech, for at that time the oral method was unknown in our state. So I went to school with hearing children. Unless you have been deaf, you will not understand the misery in this statement. A little, lonely deaf child, I went to a public school, hearing practically nothing of the teachers' instructions or the pupils' recitations. Of the torture of that deaf childhood I will not speak. You all know how cruel children may be, and a deaf childamong hearing children often suffers untold torments."
The second alternative is to seek some person who will teach the child in his own home. This, too, is very unsatisfactory, and involves loss of time and opportunity that can never be recovered.
In the first place, the beginning years of a deaf child's educational life are the most important of all. They are crucial. It is then he requires the highest skill, the greatest experience, and the most perfect conditions. The best teachers can seldom, if ever, be induced to teach a single child in its home. Usually these teachers are more or less inferior. But even the best teacher in the world cannot do for a little deaf child in his home what she could accomplish for him in a well-organized and properly conducted school.
Neither the intellect nor the character of the deaf child can be as successfully developed, after five years of age, by a private teacher in his home as in a good school.
The following elements are essential for the highest educational welfare of a deaf child:
First.The stimulus and incentive of association and competitive companionship.
Second.The contact with more than one mind and more than one speaker.
Third.The avoidance of becoming dependent upon some one as an interpreter, and the cultivation of independence and self-reliance through constant practice with various teachers.
Fourth.A fully equipped and trained organization, providing a complete and uninterrupted education under one head.
Fifth.Regularity of life, and the subordination of all living conditions to the highest educational advantage (a thing utterly incompatible with home conditions).
These most necessary conditions are not possible of attainment through private instruction in the home. The child who is kept at home and given private instruction too often grows up to be timid, self-distrustful, and unfitted tocope with the difficulties and oppositions of the world. He falls an easy prey to temptation and is quickly discouraged by obstacles. Very often he is selfish, narrow, and overbearing. Not having those about him of his own age and with the same desires, he has become accustomed to having people yield to his whims and fancies as child playmates would not yield. He is more or less excluded from the plays and pleasures of childhood. All those about him have an advantage over him.
On the other hand, the tendencies of the school-bred child are to be simple, natural, and childlike. His inclination to moodiness and suspiciousness is much less. He is happier. He becomes self-reliant, independent, and respectful of the rights of others. He is less petulant and more obedient. The wisest parents do not educate their hearing children at home, nor should they attempt it with a deaf child.
I wish to lay very special stress upon the necessityat the beginningof the most expert and experienced instruction that is attainable. If circumstances make it impossible to give to the child the bestallthe time, then he should have the best at the start rather than later. Every effort and every sacrifice that are ever going to be made for the child's sake should be at the beginning of his school training, and not delayed till he is older. The years from five to eight or ten will determine his future success. If he has poor teaching during these early years, even the best teaching later will not be able to make up the loss entirely. But if he has good teaching during the first few years, then less expert teaching later cannot dohim as much harm as it otherwise would. The early years are his most crucial period, and the best efforts should be expended then instead of when he is twelve or fourteen.
Between the ages of five and ten avoid the young and inexperienced teacher and the amateur as you would the plague. Unfortunately, the idea is prevalent thatany onecan teach a little child, but that it takes experience to teach the older pupils. This is a disastrous fallacy. Young and inexperienced women are too often quite ready to assume the great responsibility of teaching a little deaf child. They rush in where angels might well fear to tread. Unfortunately, parents, and even school superintendents, are often too ready to permit them to do this dangerous thing.
Through the courtesy of theVolta Review, in which her article appeared, and of the author, Miss Eleanor B. Worcester, a teacher of the deaf for many years, and at one time the principal of a school, I am able to include the following very sensible and valuable advice for the guidance of mothers when their children enter school.
At last the time has come when you feel that it is best for your boy to study with other children. And since your own town does not offerhim a suitable opportunity, it is necessary to send the little fellow to one of the well-known boarding schools, where trained and wise men and women are devoting their thought and energy to giving every advantage of education, comfort, and happiness to the little people under their care.
You have already decided, after much thought and the writing of many letters—perhaps after a visit to the school you incline to most—just where it is best that the child shall go.
You have studied carefully all the directions about clothing given in the school catalogue, and have made sure that every little blouse or stocking has its owner's name written or sewed fast on it, and that all the small garments are in perfect order and ready for use.
But have you thought how your own attitude toward this change in your boy's life is unconsciously preparing him either to rebel against and fear school, or to look forward togoing there as one of the most delightful and interesting events of his life?
I know that it is impossible for you to avoid dreading the day when your child must go among strangers, but I beg you not to let him see what your feeling is. It will take all your resolution and all your courage to wear not only a cheerful face, but a happy one; but you must make your boy feel that a very delightful time is coming.
If you go about the necessary preparations as you might if he were going to the show or on a visit, he will enter into the spirit of things with enthusiasm; but if you once let him find you crying over his packing he will immediately jump to the conclusion that some dreadful thing is in prospect, and will be entirely prepared to be frightened at being left at school, and to break your heart by clinging to you and begging to go home again. And, more than this, he will be far more likely to be homesick.
So, since you know it is best for him to be in school, and that it is the only possible roadto happiness and usefulness, why not lead him to anticipate the going; to look forward to it as a treat, and to feel that to be a schoolboy is really the great end of existence?
One of the first steps in this direction will be to help him understand a little what kind of a place he is bound for.
Very likely the school you have decided on publishes an illustrated catalogue, and weeks before school opens begin to show him the pictures of the school buildings and grounds, and make him understand that on a certain day in September, which you mark on the calendar with bright crayon, you and he will go there. Let him see one of the little white beds where he will sleep after you return home, the sunny dining room where he will eat his morning porridge and his Sunday ice cream; the playground full of rollicksome youngsters, with whom he will seesaw and play tag by and by, and the busy schoolroom, where so many delightful and interesting things are sure to happen.
Talk about all these things often and brightlyand you will find that school has become a most desirable and fascinating place, and that every night there will be a great satisfaction in climbing on a chair to scratch off from the calendar another day done before the joy of going there.
Then you can buy such delightful things to be put into that waiting trunk—things often to be looked at, but never to be used till that wonderful place is reached—long red and blue pencils, with rubbers on the ends; boxes of writing paper, all gay with pictures and exactly right for the first letters home; a foot rule, and, if you are a truly brave mother, a real jackknife to sharpen the same red and blue pencils and add to the joy of living.
It is absorbing work, too, to mark them all with one's name, so they may never be mistaken for any other little boy's property, and to make a place for a new toy or two, though if you are wise you will not buy many playthings now, but will save them to send later, one by one, by parcel post, to be received with a joy it is a pity you cannot be there to see,it will be so out of proportion to any other pleasure you could give by such simple means.
Of course, you must have some kodak pictures taken—ever so many of them—showing the family, the house, and the pets, as well as the boy himself. These are to be kept, too, to go in letters. They will be not only very precious possessions, but if they are labeled carefully they will be extremely useful in the classroom when your boy begins to learn to speak the names of the people at home.
Since they are to be used for this double purpose, be sure that each member of the family group is very distinctly marked, or the names of Aunt Mary and sister Helen may get hopelessly mixed in the boy's mind!
Finally, the last little garment and the last package is in the trunk, the last day is scratched off the calendar, and the boy himself is on the train. And now let me tell you something that you will not believe—that you will even resent, but which is perfectly true, and which I hope will comfort you a little when yousay good-by to the boy—and that is this: it really is very unusual for a little child from five to eight years old to be homesick at school. There are so many distractions, so many new and curious things to see, so many interesting things to do, and there are so many other children all friendly and all happy, that even if your boy cries when you leave him, the probabilities are high that before you reach the station he will be playing—shyly or uproariously, as temperament may decide—but certainly happily, with some new-found friend.
One of the most delightful things about a school for deaf children is the way all the other pupils welcome, pet, and look out for a newcomer. Every one makes much of him, and it would be hard indeed to be lonely long in the midst of so much attention and friendliness.
And now a word about letters.
Before you sent the boy to school I hope you didn't fail to teach him to recognize the written names of the different members of the family, so that he might be sure to understandwhom his first letters came from. And don't forget that he will be eager for letters! Too many mothers feel that it is useless to write to their children during their first year away from them. They are so sure that no word from them can be understood that they content themselves with sending inquiries to the proper authorities, and an occasional picture postcard to the children themselves, and fail to realize how soon their little boy or girl grasps the fact that the other children have real letters in envelopes, and that these come from home, or how sharp a disappointment it is when day after day goes by and brings them nothing.
If you could see, as I have seen, a letter, so worn that it was cracked on all its folds and dingy with much handling, carried day after day inside a little blouse, or guimpe, and put under the pillows every night, you would understand a little what those pieces of paper, covered with very imperfectly understood characters, but carrying love and remembrance from home, mean, even before the children canread them. And very soon, if you are an observant mother, your child will really be able to read them.
For example, your boy's first letter may be something like this:
"Dear Mamma:"I am well. I love you.Harry."
"Dear Mamma:
"I am well. I love you.Harry."
When you answer it you might say, with the certainty that every word would be understood:
"Dear Harry:"Mamma loves you. Papa is well. Mamma and Papa love you."Good-by.Mamma."
"Dear Harry:
"Mamma loves you. Papa is well. Mamma and Papa love you.
"Good-by.Mamma."
Not a very satisfactory letter, do you say? Perhaps not to you, but most delightful and understandable to the little boy to whom it is written. And if a little later you follow it with another containing one of the kodak pictures of the cat, with "Tommy" written under it, accompanying such a note as this, not only your little boy, but his teacher will bless you:
"Dear Harry:"Mamma is well. Papa is well. Mamma and Papa love you. Tommy loves you, too. Tommy is the cat. Tommy wants to see you."Good-by.Mamma."
"Dear Harry:
"Mamma is well. Papa is well. Mamma and Papa love you. Tommy loves you, too. Tommy is the cat. Tommy wants to see you.
"Good-by.Mamma."
I have written these two notes not as models to be copied, but to show you how with a little thought and care you may ring the changes on almost every sentence that your boy learns; and make use of every new word, giving him a great deal of pleasure and helping to fix the phrases in his mind and to make him realize that they are really valuable additions to his means of communication. But I do not mean that you should confine your letters entirely to words and sentences that the child already knows. In fact, new expressions, if they are short and simple, and if the main part of your letter is made up of things the child understands at once, will add very much to the interest of your letter. He will be eager to know what the strange words mean, and the newnouns, verbs, and adjectives will go immediately to swell his vocabulary.
Like any child just learning to talk, your little boy will at first use nouns, when later he will use pronouns, so in your earliest letters to him you will be surer of making yourself understood if you do the same. Probably, too, with the exception of two or three sentences like "I am well. I love you," you will notice that all his statements are written in the past tense, and that will be a guide to you to confine your own remarks to the past, for the most part, till you notice that he has begun to use the future and the present himself. Watch his letters carefully and adapt your own language forms to his.
There are two things that, as a general rule, I would advise you not to write about, and these are any illnesses in the family and—that supreme joy of school life—the box you are planning to send.
My reasons for this taboo are that even very little children are often made unhappy andanxious, sometimes for days, if they know there is sickness at home, while in the second place boxes are so often delayed that they become the source of much disturbance of mind when the expressman fails to bring them.
I knew a little girl who watched every delivery for a week and cried after every one because the box her mother had promised her did not appear. So let illness and boxes go unmentioned till you can write something like this, "Papa was sick last week. He is well now. He goes to the office every day." And after the box has had time to reach its destination you can say, "Mamma sent a box to you Wednesday. She put two handkerchiefs, some new shoes, six oranges, and some money in the box. Papa gave the money to you."
If you are like most mothers, before many weeks have gone by you will be eager to visit your boy and see for yourself how he is getting on; whether he is really as happy as the letters from school assure you he is; what he is learning in class, and whether he has blanketsenough on his bed and sugar enough on his oatmeal.
But before the letter announcing the day of your arrival is posted or your ticket is bought, sit down by the fire and think the matter over.
You have confidence in the school, else you would never have sent your boy there; and you have been told repeatedly either that the little fellow is happy and well or, it may be, that he was rather homesick at first, but has now settled down to a very comfortable and contented state of mind and is doing well in class.
Now, if you go to see him too soon after he has left home there will really be a good deal more danger that the boy will be homesick after you leave him than there was when you took him to school in September, even if he has been quite happy up to the time of your visit.
In the first place, he will think, drawing his conclusions from visits that he may have made before, that school is over and that you havecome to take him home. So it will be a great surprise and shock when you go away without him. And in any case, after the separation of some weeks, his love for you will make him want to be with you, and he will really suffer when you say good-by.
So, if I were you, I would wait till after the Christmas holidays before going for my visit. By that time he will be fully settled in his new life and will look on it as an established part of existence. He will know from observation that other mothers come for a little while and then go home again without taking their children with them, and his advance in understanding will make it much easier to explain to him that your visit is temporary and will not make any radical change in his own life.
The delay will mean a good deal of self-sacrifice for you, but may very possibly save your boy from a sharp attack of homesickness, while later in the year this danger will usually have disappeared, and your visit will bring nothing but pleasure to you both and will helpto make school what you want it to be—a place where all sorts of delightful things are constantly sure to happen.
But the opportunities and obligations of the parents of deaf children to aid in their education by no means cease when the children enter school.
Throughout the entire period of school life, and even after their children leave school, the parents can be of very great assistance to them. During the time that the school is in session, if the child is away from home, the parents should write not less than once a week, and oftener if possible. These letters should contain all the little happenings at home, no matter how insignificant and uninteresting they may seem. If these things are expressed in simple language, using short sentences and common words, the letters will be one of the most efficient means of aiding the children to an ability to read, that the teacher possesses.The child is full of eager curiosity to know the smallest details of the familiar home life. He will exert his mind more to dig out the meaning of the language of home letters than he will to understand a story in a reader. Miss Worcester has suggested one or two little letters that would do during the first half year at school. By the beginning of the second year it would be helpful if the letters read something like this:
"My Dear Boy:"We got your nice letter. Thank you for it. We always like to know what you do at school. We like to know the names of your schoolmates. We are glad when you tell us about your books and your teachers. Mother, Tom, Jane and I are well. We talk about you often. We are glad you can go to school. A cat frightened the hens. The hens ran. The cat was naughty. I drove the cat away. I think the cat wanted to eat the little chickens."Tom hid behind the door. He jumped out quickly. He frightened Jane. She screamed. He laughed. Jane cried. Mother scolded Tom because he made Jane cry. Tom said Jane was a baby.Jane said Tom was a bad boy. Then Jane laughed. She forgave Tom. Tom said he was sorry."We all love you."Good-by."Your loving"Father."
"My Dear Boy:
"We got your nice letter. Thank you for it. We always like to know what you do at school. We like to know the names of your schoolmates. We are glad when you tell us about your books and your teachers. Mother, Tom, Jane and I are well. We talk about you often. We are glad you can go to school. A cat frightened the hens. The hens ran. The cat was naughty. I drove the cat away. I think the cat wanted to eat the little chickens.
"Tom hid behind the door. He jumped out quickly. He frightened Jane. She screamed. He laughed. Jane cried. Mother scolded Tom because he made Jane cry. Tom said Jane was a baby.Jane said Tom was a bad boy. Then Jane laughed. She forgave Tom. Tom said he was sorry.
"We all love you.
"Good-by.
"Your loving"Father."
Each year the letters can be a little more grown up and they should always be frequent.
When vacation time comes and the children come home for the summer, the home folks will probably have some trouble at first in understanding their imperfect speech. Do not be discouraged. The speech will steadily improve from year to year, and you will soon be able to comprehend it, even when it is very faulty. But do not accept from the child anything except the best speech he is capable of. When the boy first arrives you will, probably, not know just how much to expect of him. To begin with, it will do him no harm to ask him to repeat what he says, even if you really did understand him the first time. He will probably speak much more distinctly the second time than he did the first, and you will see that you can demand of him more than you at first thought he could do. He will not be discouraged by being asked to repeat. He is used to it. The price of good speech, like the price of liberty, is eternal vigilance. During the school period, teachers and parents should give unremitting attention to demanding of the children,every time they speak, the best enunciation of which they are at that time capable.
If you do not understand the boy, or he does not understand you, do not let him resort to gestures, nor use them yourself. Give him pencil and paper, if necessary. It will not be necessary often or long, and each day occasions of difficulty will grow fewer.
Provide some useful and helpful occupation for the child for at least a part of each day. Do not let him play at random all the time. Continue a certain regularity of life in the matter of meals and getting up and going to bed. Insist upon respectful behavior and good manners. He has these demanded of him at school. Do not let him return in the fall having lost much that he had gained during the preceding year.
When he is at home keep him in touch with the activities and the topics 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 speaknaturallyto 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. Theaim 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. Buteach 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, butbe 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 underreal 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.
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.