dhw5320 said:It's up to the parents and the individual to decide what works best for them.
Yes, I think that going pure oral really does mess up social-emoitional development. There's nothing wrong with trying to develop oral skills...I think many of us here are glad that we can "hear" and talk somewhat, and I think it's a very useful and vital skill. I always encourage parents to pursue BOTH avenues of commuication. You would not educate a kid who was a whiz in English but somewhat defiencent in math, by concentrating exclusively on their deficts in math would you? Of course you would offer some remedial assistance in math, but you wouldn't concentrate exclusively on their math defiects. Exactly, so why do we educate dhh kids orally or raise them orally without benifit of Sign? One of the prime objections that I have to those who push oralism is that far far too often, the people pushing oralism couch it in ways that make it seem more "normal" or in ways that are very audist (eg the hearing world is the best and there's no value in the deaf-world)because his parents want him being oralist to be like them. They never realized how he feels.
Sorry I guess I should have put that on AVERAGE many oral-only-oral-first dhh kids have poor social-emoitional development. There are some dhh kids who are socially-emoitionally with it (aka popular) but on average many oral-only kids have poor social-emoitional skills. That is b/c social-emoitional issues are a pragmatic-language(social) concern. It's b/c most orally raised kids do not master the meat and potatos of spoken language. Research has indicated that dhh orally raised kids(even many of the "superstars") have difficulty with figures of speech. This includes things like detecting inflection, tone of voice etc, which can lead to social-emoitional difficulties. I'm not saying that all dhh kids have the same social-emoitional concerns as would a kid with severe Asperger's Syndrome, but most of them do have social-emoitional of note. (sort of like the same concerns that a lot of kids with learning disabilties have) It's sort of the way the average reading level of a dhh kid is 4th grade, but there are dhh students who read at FAR above that level, and there are some who are below that level.Ahem...I grew up pure oral as you call it but I dont consider myself screwed up socially and emotionally.
It all boils down to EACH individual, regardless of her/his communication tools.
You won't get booted out of alldeaf by me. I haven't really noticed any hardcore radical Deaf seperatists here who insist that ASL-only is the only way. I think a lot of us are saying that while we apprciate our oral skills and they are very important to us, we wish that we'd been able to learn ASL and be exposed to Deaf culture early on in our lives. There is value in ASL and Deaf culture, and hearing parents need to understand that! I am VERY glad I can function somewhat in the hearing world, but at the same time, I wish I'd had access to ASL to grease the skids a little. I just find ASL and Deaf culture to be extremely valuable and a very useful skill just as much as oralism and immersion into the hearing culture!I guess I'll get booted out of AllDeaf...but I think oral communication is important...
I grew up in a hearing family - I was the only deaf kid for 12 years until my dear cousin was born...*laugh evilly*... but I do thank the Lord that my mother saw fit to put me in an oralist school for the deaf...even though they did fail big time to get my drawl out...heh heh. I know I didnt learn ASL til I was 28, and even then its still more like PSE than ASL...but guess what? As long as my friends understand me, Im satisified.
Without oralism,
TiaraPrincess said:Miss Delectable, would you consider Cued Speech? That helps with visually seeing speech sounds. Some people use sign language and Cued Speech. It helps with pronunciation. Cued Speech is easy to learn in like a week. I wish I had known about that a long time ago. All interpreters should learn this for pronunciation purposes. There were times that I didn't know how to pronounce things and the terp would just say it, and I'll be like, "what?" Would have come in really handy for speech purposes such as vocabulary (no you can't cheat).