Toward a social relational model of Deaf childhood

1987

When a deaf child is born to hearing parents, there are several problems that arise not due to the physiological handicap, but because of the language barrier. The present treatise is an integration of several issues having an impact upon the socialization, education, and language development of the deaf child as well as the disruption of the familial unit. Relevant issues discussed include: (1) the meaning of a child to a parent, (2) the developmental stages of the deaf child in comparison to the hearing child, (31 the discovery of deafness, (4) the deaf child's influence 6pon parents, grandparents, and siblings, and lastly 151 finding a communicative mode. BEST COPY AVAILAbLt. 3 2

American Annals of the Deaf, 2000

A Good Future for Deaf Children": A Five-Year Sign Language Intervention Project eaf preschoolers and hearing family members learned sign language in a 5-year intervention project. Once weekly, each child met with a teacher who was deaf. Parents, siblings, and other relatives met about once monthly to study sign language, and all families in the project signed together about twice yearly. The present study addressed four questions asked of parents about the project: (a) How did the children learn to sign? (b) Did both the parents and the children benefit from the project? (c) What was the position of sign language in the family? (d) Did the project have some impact on the family's social network? The families indicated satisfaction with the project; they learned to sign and their social networks expanded. Parents favored bilingual education: Sign language was the main language but learning Finnish was also important. Learning sign language was not easy, especially for the fathers. The families that were most actively involved in the lessons learned the most.

The aim of this paper is to show shifts in the language development of deaf and hard of hearing children over the last 30 years. The paper presents an overview of Western and Polish studies on education and language development in deaf children in terms of psycholinguistics. Perceptions of the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of such children must be subject to revision and continual methodological reflection due to rapidly changing variables, such as technological progress, social and cultural conditions of primary socialization and the aims of deaf education. Now that an increasing number of deaf children undergo cochlear implantation, and digital hearing aids can provide 70-75 dB of gain, thus enabling the children to spontaneously develop speech, many of them function in a bimodal environment of the sign and the speech. However, they perform at different levels of educational and developmental success. This paper elucidates the issues of language flexibility in and heterogenization of children using hearing aids or implants on a daily basis.

Theory Into Practice, 1975

The author offers support for viewing the deaf child as a member of a linguistic minority and considers holl this situation affects education of the deaf. Deaf persons are discussed in terms of their intellectual abilities, educational achievement, English competence, and the sociolinguistic factors which point to the existence of a deaf community. American Sign Language (ASL) is seen to have its own grammar and to be the native language of the deaf. Use of ASL (rather than the oral approach) is advocated in the education of deaf children, and procedures similar to those used in bilingual educational programs are recommended© (LS) * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible for the quality of the original document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original.

Sign Language Studies, 1975

With the birth of a child, parents are also born. Parents and children develop, grow, learn and make mistakes together. There is no manual to indicate whether parents are making mistakes in raising another being, nor is there a reward when they do something well. It is a subjective assessment of how good a parent someone is, mistakes in upbringing are often overlooked or it turns out that situations that seemed wrong and unsuccessful resulted in a positive outcome. Questioning the correctness of raising one's own child is a daily routine for parents. However, what happens when hearing parents have a hearing-impaired child? How do they adapt, with the added pressure of how to deal with the new situation and how to raise a child who will understand them and who they will fully understand? Of course, there are differences in raising a deaf child depending on the fact if parents are hearing or deaf, but both are guided by their natural instincts in order to achieve the best possible communication with their own child. According to one definition, communication is the ability to share values, beliefs and feelings. We can communicate verbally and non-verbally. Verbal communication refers to speech, and non-verbal communication refers to visual interaction. The aim of this research was to examine the hearing parents of hearing-impaired children about the challenges they face the most when it comes to communication with their own children and how they solve the issues. The research results showed that hearing parents of deaf children communicate with the child at an early age. However, with all the efforts they make while their child grows up, there is one significant part of the child's personality that won't develop properly due to missing verbal communication. For the same reason, there is a distance in mutual communication that cannot be overcome even with the unconditional love they provide. From all of the above, the conclusion emerges that it is necessary to work on the education of hearing parents of deaf children with adequate forms of communication.

The South African journal of communication disorders. Die Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, 2000

Many hearing impaired children rely on signing as a method of communication and are educated through this medium at school. While there is a paucity of information on the use of signing in the home, the impression in the literature is that these children are often unable to communicate through this medium in their homes. This has serious implications for family relationships as well as the personal well-being, educational success and social integration of the child. The present study explored the signing experience of 45 mothers of children in the junior primary phase at schools for the deaf in the Durban region of Kwa-Zulu Natal as a reflection of the use of signing within the home. A descriptive survey design, using two researcher administered questionnaires, was used to obtain information on the signing practice of mothers, exploring aspects related to the extent to which signing is used, the type of signing used and signing proficiency. The findings revealed mothers' signing...

This paper explores what mothers think about language, what they plan to do in language and what they actually do within the context of interaction with their deaf child. Through the concept of construction of deafness, developed to understand how parents view deafness, we attempted to capture mothers' language ideology and planning by analyzing interview data. The findings of the interview analyses were confronted with analyses of language practices with their deaf child. As such we were able to gain insight into the interplay between construction of deafness and language ideology on one hand, and language practices on the other hand.

Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies, 2006

This paper relates some experiences of a hearing person who has grown up with Deaf parents who use New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) as a primary mode of communication. It describes some of what it is like to be hearing in a Deaf community. It also describes experiences of being in a hearing community while being raised by Deaf parents. This includes what it was like to know both English and NZSL when few others did. Finally, as a qualified NZSL interpreter, issues of being both an interpreter and Deaf community member are introduced. 'How do you spell xxx Mrs Creasy?' 'Pardon? 'How do you spell xxx?' 'Say it again for me dear. ' 'Xxx, you know!' 'I'm not sure I know exactly which word you mean. '

Contemporary Sociology, 1995

An early and initial consideration of literacy in relation to sign languages

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology

To assist medical and hearing-science professionals in supporting parents of deaf children, we have identified common questions that parents may have and provide evidence-based answers. In doing so, a compassionate and positive narrative about deafness and deaf children is offered, one that relies on recent research evidence regarding the critical nature of early exposure to a fully accessible visual language, which in the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). This evidence includes the role of sign language in language acquisition, cognitive development, and literacy. In order for parents to provide a nurturing and anxiety-free environment for early childhood development, signing at home is important even if their child also has the additional nurturing and care of a signing community. It is not just the early years of a child's life that matter for language acquisition; it's the early months, the early weeks, even the early days. Deaf children cannot wait for accessible language input. The whole family must learn simultaneously as the deaf child learns. Even moderate fluency on the part of the family benefits the child enormously. And learning the sign language together can be one of the strongest bonding experiences that the family and deaf child have.

Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2021

It has often been said, "It takes a village to raise a child"; likewise for deaf children born into hearing families, this village model provides the support necessary for optimal developmental outcomes for the child. Here a mixed method design was used to understand the outcomes for deaf adults who grew up a mid-size community with fragmented services in order to better understand what worked and what had not worked for these individuals. Results from a survey and follow up interviews identified two groups of individuals, those who stayed in the community having access only to the local resources and those who left the community finding more resources. In general, those who stayed described themselves as hard of hearing and used a mixture of sign and spoken language while those who left identified as Deaf and reported finding a Deaf community that provided them role models, aspirational capital , and a Deaf identity. Results are discussed using the frame of integrating support for families, effective schooling, and transition services. Recommendations are made to support the creation of such villages for deaf children in areas that may not have sufficient resources.

Deaf education in Croatia still continues to use a predominantly auditory-speech approach, spoken Croatian only, and simultaneous communication (SC). In the last few years a few changes in tradition have been made: most importantly, educational interpreting is now available in high schools and at the university level. Given the lack of bilingual deaf education and early sign language exposure, deaf children make very slow progress in literacy, compared with deaf children of deaf parents. Benefits of early sign language acquisition can be seen in deaf children of deaf parents not only in better social adaptation skills, but also in their better academic achievement compared with other deaf children. The cultural approach to deaf education views sign language as the most natural linguistic form of deaf people, and a powerful means of communication for all purposes and in all circumstances. Here, we discuss case studies of Sweden and Denmark, with 20 years of tradition in deaf bilingual education; the Netherlands, with about 10 years of deaf bilingual education, and Spain, where deaf bilingual education is in the process of implementation. These examples (Sweden, Spain, Netherlands) demonstrate the processes of policy changes and the shift to deaf education that is aimed at taking care of the needs of deaf children and their families, as well as implementing the human rights protections for linguistic minorities.

Per Linguam

Language development is often hampered by the fact that 90 per cent of deaf children are born into hearing families who do not know Sign language (SL) or haven't had any previous contact with the deaf world. Such parents often use only spoken language to communicate with the child, which results in no or very little language exposure. Many deaf children only start to learn a language, signed or spoken, when they start attending school, usually between the ages of three and seven. As a result, the deaf child has a delay in cognitive and language development and finds it hard to learn a SL, like South African Sign Language (SASL), as well as a written language (e.g., English). This late exposure to SL proves to be a serious cognitive problem for deaf children when compared to those children who acquired language from birth. This problem led to the research question namely, whether deaf children’s language and cognition can still develop to the required level for school readiness i...