Get visual
In adapting one’s expectations to the new reality of your baby’s deafness, it is necessary to literally get down on one’s knees and see the world from a baby’s level. This is a visual infant; so pay attention to what is visible and rich in meaning in the environment. All sounds will be meaningless, fuzzy or absent. Even if you choose to include hearing aids or cochlear implants, remember that what the infant sees is most important to learning.
Feed the child’s strongest sense
Enrich the environment with things that are bright, lend themselves to manipulation, and to interaction with you. Post labels with large words on everything: lamp, table, TV, window, doll, train. Use your appreciation for his visual awareness, your newly learned signs, and your own face to communicate by animatedly saying his name, your name and the activity you are sharing.
Understanding brings meaning
The visual infant immediately takes his awareness to a higher level from such attention. Teach him to love books by acting out the stories as you look at the pages together. Put him on the counter to watch you prepare food and tell him the names of foods as you both sample them. (For fidgety toddlers, take your food preparation to the little table instead of the counter.) When you put an older child to bed, be sure he can see the words labeling things in the room. Think about the noises some toys make and encourage him to feel them and name the sound. Note: electronic sounds make very little vibration. Choose toys with visible sound-making mechanisms and obvious vibration.
World of visual language
As the child grows, be aware of the language in the environment and teach him to attend to them. The word STOP on signs, the captions on TV, the print on milk cartons and cereal boxes, the words on magazine covers, even the words on his toys.
Expand on his experience
Watch how the child figures out things from seeing his environment and enhance his understanding. “The TV changed because Daddy pressed the remote.” “The dog is barking because someone is outside.”
It comes back
The visual child will also find ways to express visually. Encourage any artistic, mechanical, literary, even any musical interests he may show. Music can be visual and tactile. All forms of expression are received and appreciated, and returned in kind–a splash in the finger paint is answered by mom’s handprint. A twang of the strings on a toy violin is answered by a rhythmic one-two pluck of two widely different frequencies.
Watching and understanding
The visual child will be encouraged to watch what he can’t touch. Bring him to the zoo, to the neighborhood childrens’ theater, to the park to watch people, and tell him what is happening. This also leads to the “what?” stage of response and, inevitably, that “why?” stage that drives most parents crazy. This, too, will pass as language reaches full competency.
Don’t confuse hearing with intelligence or language
One last thing to remember is: talking does not equal language; it is only one of many ways to express language. Look for visual language; it comes in every gesture, every expression, and every attempt to convey meaning through the variety of media that is offered to the child. He may become a writer, or a mechanic that understands how machines work; he may learn to speak or become a storyteller in American Sign Language. He may express far more in colors and paints as an artist than in exchanging hellos. And you, too, will learn a whole new understanding of the meaning of expression through other than hearing.
Diane Plassey Gutierrez
When a hand moves, a voice is spoken,
Diane Gutierrez and Anne-Marie Baer:
Overjoyed was I to watch your vlog.
My first reaction was “PAH” because
more often than not have I seen or
met idealists than realists.
Thou art a realist! A Renaissance thinker!
Merci beaucoup!
Jean
excellent point! bravo!
Beautiful and awesome education for Parents for Deaf babies!!! Thank you!
Hi Anne Marie and Diane,
Exceptional! Full of details to use the introspective education of early children to use the visual atompshere that will engage their learning in many aspects of living condition to accomplish later in the life.
Bravo!
Nick
Hi there,
Beautiful Beautiful,
That is what we all need to see and learn in positive way about ASL and Deaf toddlers/children.
Please continue your program and let it spread out North America and reach all parents of Deaf and Hard of hearing toddlers/children. They need to see rational and well informed discussion and articles about ASL.
I am quite disappointed with others that prefer to focus on negative campaigns against parents and their cochlear implanted children and AVT programs rather than to promote ASL to parents and others positively. I am quite worried that they will turn off many parents and they may have caused many children to stay away from ASL and Deaf community.
We need to increase more positive about ASL as much as possible to keep many parents in loops and let them ponder about ASL.
Deafchip
What a wonderful endeavor! It seems like you’ve gathered together an impressive list of people. I love the idea of a site devoted to ASL literacy. I’m wondering if you’ll work with the DBC? After all, you and the DBC have similar goals. There is strength in numbers, and if we could model unity by reaching out and working together, even better. I hope this is in the works or will happen.
Best of luck in this endeavor!
The points presented above validated what I did for my Deaf/CI son when he was a tyke. I started him off in a fully visual environment and supplemented with sound and increased spoken communication/environmental sound identification as time progressed.
The mindset that Anne pointed out in her translation focuses mainly for deafbabies without functional residual hearing or cochlear implants. My suggestion to Anne and Diane to modify the suggestions to incorporate sound with the assumption the baby/child has functional hearing. For example, when the mother plays with the toy violin strings, ratherthan focusing on the “feeling”, add the sound effects in ASL. Here I am speaking from experience with my bilingual son who has a CI.
It is becoming more rare for a profoundly deaf child to be implanted very young. Show some flexibility by modifying the information above in order to show new parents that sound effects and spoken language nedn’t bhe excluded from the changed mindset.
Anne S, see this “A twang of the strings on a toy violin is answered by a rhythmic one-two pluck of two widely different frequencies.” Although I can understand that you would like to see how caregivers can associate sounds and spoken language with signing. Absolutely. We will feature something about this later, how about you with your kids? We will be interested to see how a Deaf family does this because for us it is a challenge with Noam on digital aids. Our Hoh son helps with this plus speech - auditory sessions 3 times weekly.
However we are emphasizing on visual learning especially for babies and children who cannot fully benefit from hearing devices, balancing with options as many of them eventually will grow up becoming members of Deaf community. They should enter well equipped with fluency in both languages.
INSPIRING! This is a “PAH” moment! I look forward to the growth of this site!
Congrats!
Julie
Anna S, thanks for your added input. Your ideas are a great supplement, although this blog focused mainly on the hearing parent developing a visual mindset. Every parent can modify ideas and techniques to fit their own child. Do comment again, your ideas are welcome.
I really appreciate this post. I know that some suggestions will be appropriate at different developmental levels. For example, I think it’s more appropriate to label to a very young child then start asking the what questions. But that’s more specifically language oriented.
What your article really addresses is a more fundamental experience. Of (hearing) parents standing in the shoes of their deaf child and making an exciting world from their perspective. That is a tremendous concept, and requires parents to really reach for a new level of selflessness. The environmental experience is also is so basic that it might be easily overlooked in the race for language, English or ASL. But it’s an important first step, that is, trying to see the world from your deaf kid’s perspective. I think it will impact later experiences, like how to arrange a party that is mixed hearing and deaf or a family gathering your deaf kid might be the only deaf person there, etc.
Thanks for some of your practical suggestions. I would’ve loved to read this when E was a baby. We did a lot of play in mirrors. Where we were living at the time had a big mirror on the back of our bedroom door, and I’d sit there with him on my lap and sign books and make faces. it was so fun!
Way to go, Anne, this site rocks- I’m not just speaking aethesically, but this information is very crucial.
Anne, as the Deaf (and first-time!) mother of a Deaf newborn, I was thrilled to read this site. Thanks for bringing new ideas to my child’s life. And it’s great to see you once again!
(in English)
Hi Trudy! Congrats on your new Deaf infant and your amazing journey of motherhood with all exciting experiences, nurturing moments, and language development. See how your baby fastens to eye gazing as she becomes aware of different facial expressions. From there, language emerges. It is reaLLY EXCITING. I look forward hearing from you about your baby later on.
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Anne-Marie,
Thought you would be interested in visiting Jamie Berke’s blog wherein she wrote about the newly-founded Las Vegas Charter School for the Deaf with an emphasis on a bilingual-bicultural approach for K-3. All teachers have ASL skills. http://deafness.about.com/b/2008/04/24/welcome-las-vegas-charter-school-of-the-deaf.htm).