Eager to give her son every benefit possible

[loml]

Schwarz Financial Services LLC, located in Bethesda, is the only deaf-owned, independent registered investment advisory firm, according to its president, Louis Schwarz, 59, who became the first deaf man to have gained the credentials as Certified Financial Planner (CFP). Schwarz is joined in his firm, which is mandated to help deaf people achieve financial security, by Simon Roffe, 29, who is also deaf.

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Both fluent in English and American Sign Language, Roffe and Schwarz are well able to communicate with deaf clients, and their offices utilize the latest in communication assistive technology.

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At age 3 1/2, his mother says, "he had a vocabulary of only 150 words. He was two years language-delayed for his age," she says, adding that children at that age acquire roughly three-quarters of their working vocabularies that they will use throughout life.

But, two years later, he had more than caught up with his peers with normal hearing. What made all the difference, he and his mother aver, was the use of cued speech, a manual method of helping lipreaders distinguish speech sounds

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