Why - Why the Medical Society constantly pressure on the Parents?

[shel90]

Shel....I think it was in your post a few pages back that you mentioned the much lower reading level of many deaf children. I am at loss to understand why this should be the case. In my experience, reading was the main source of information and education for me growing up. My nightly routine during my teens was to retire to bed with a huge bowl of icecream and a book. Nothing equals the pleasure of a well written book, a nice turn of phrase, as the saying goes. I must say I struggle on here to understand the posts of those whose first language is ASL as the grammar and sentence structure is so different to written English. This is not a criticism, just a stated fact.

Can you give me some understanding as to why the reading levels should be so low, when I would have thought they would be much higher owing to the dependence of the deaf on the written word. Are the literacy levels also going down for the general population, as is the case here in NZ.

It is due to the fact that many deaf children were deprived of full access to language during their first 5 years, the most critical years for language development.

 

[Raykat]

It is due to the fact that many deaf children were deprived of full access to language during their first 5 years, the most critical years for language development.

Thank you Shel, maybe I am rather dense as I still cant see why reading should be a problem. In my case I was not diagnosed as deaf until reaching school at 5 yrs. Being adopted nothing was known of my deaf family background. Looking back I guess I was smacked a few times for doing naughty things when in fact I didnt have a clue what was being said, no sound at all. Must have been lipreading to a certain extent during that time.(I have never had lipreading lessons) The first two school years, at a large public school, were horrendous. After than I transfered to a small church school and discovered books, never looked back again....lol

 

[shel90]

Thank you Shel, maybe I am rather dense as I still cant see why reading should be a problem. In my case I was not diagnosed as deaf until reaching school at 5 yrs. Being adopted nothing was known of my deaf family background. Looking back I guess I was smacked a few times for doing naughty things when in fact I didnt have a clue what was being said, no sound at all. Must have been lipreading to a certain extent during that time.(I have never had lipreading lessons) The first two school years, at a large public school, were horrendous. After than I transfered to a small church school and discovered books, never looked back again....lol

There are some deaf children who managed to develop high literacy skills despite being language deprived. You are obviously one of them. You did good!

 

[jillio]

There are some deaf children who managed to develop high literacy skills despite being language deprived. You are obviously one of them. You did good!

Agreed. Raykat has done well. Perhaps the advantage of smaller class size allowed for more individual attention than students are able to receive in the maintream classroom today? That, plus an innate love of the printed word. Some children are avid readers, and seem to have been born with a fondness for books. I think that holds true for hearing children, as well. A child who loves books is at a definate advantage.

 

[jillio]

A little additional research:

Background: In the context of the established finding that theory-of-mind (ToM) growth is seriously delayed in late-signing deaf children, and some evidence of equivalent delays in those learning speech with conventional hearing aids, this study’s novel contribution was to explore ToM development in deaf children with cochlear implants. Implants can substantially boost auditory acuity and rates of language growth. Despite the implant, there are often problems socialising with hearing peers and some language difficulties, lending special theoretical interest to the present comparative design. Methods: A total of 52 children aged 4 to 12 years took a battery of false belief tests of ToM. There were 26 oral deaf children, half with implants and half with hearing aids, evenly divided between oral-only versus signplus- oral schools. Comparison groups of age-matched high-functioning children with autism and younger hearing children were also included. Results: No significant ToM differences emerged between deaf children with implants and those with hearing aids, nor between those in oral-only versus sign plus-
oral schools. Nor did the deaf children perform any better on the ToM tasks than their age peers
with autism. Hearing preschoolers scored significantly higher than all other groups. For the deaf and the autistic children, as well as the preschoolers, rate of language development and verbal maturity significantly predicted variability in ToM, over and above chronological age. Conclusions: The finding that deaf children with cochlear implants are as delayed in ToM development as children with autism and their deaf peers with hearing aids or late sign language highlights the likely significance of peer interaction and early fluent communication with peers and family, whether in sign or in speech, in order to optimally facilitate the growth of social cognition and language. Keywords: Deafness, children, social cognition, theory-of-mind, cochlear implant. Abbreviations: DSM-IV: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – IVth revision; PPVT: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; ToM: theory of mind; VMA: verbal mental age.


“Thus when Meadow, Greenberg, Erting, and Carmichael (1981) compared hearing mothers of deaf preschoolers with deaf natively signing dyads, they found that deaf mother–deaf child and hearing– hearing dyads achieved conversational versatility, mutual understanding and spontaneity of reference. But dyads with a hearing mother and a deaf child had problems communicating, regardless of whether the child was being taught to communicate orally or
in sign. Indeed, discourse about absent people or objects was almost never observed in either of these latter dyads. Along with delayed language, restrictions upon the oral deaf child’s opportunities to exchange information about thoughts, feelings, or intentions with hearing parents, peers and siblings may curtail ToM development. As de Villiers and de Villiers (1999) explained: ‘With an orally-taught deaf child not exposed to Sign, the limited speech, vocabulary
and syntax typically present at age 4 years is insufficient to support elaborate mind-talk, especially reference to others’ beliefs’ (p. 206).”

“False belief has been studied collectively, including the present study, in more than 200 orally educated deaf children aged 4 to 13 years from several different countries on a variety of standard tasks. The consistency that emerges, despite these variations, argues against attributing oral deaf children’s problems to task variables or to varied local approaches to deaf education.”

“In line with previous findings of delayed ToM development in oral deaf children with hearing aids and late signers, the present study made the novel contribution of revealing equivalent delays in oral deaf children of primary school age with cochlear implants.”

Peterson, C. (2004). Theory of mind development in oral deaf children with cochlear implants or conventional hearing aids. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry. 45(6).pp1096-1106.

 

[flip]

I too would like more information about these children. Several that I have met do not sound significantly different than other children their age (implanted no later than 2 years old, at age 5). Others I have met that were implanted several years later than that do sound "different", but you can easily understand every word they say.

I think it is a fact that in successful CI implantations, the access to sound make an obvious and great difference in speech skills.

That's exactly what I am saying, they do not sound significantly different from other children, but there is a difference. This difference will increase as the children gets older. Sure you will understand them as grown up.

 

[LadySekhmet]

Curious..are all of the teachers there hearing? Any deaf teachers there at that school?

All the teachers are hearing. I've only heard of ONE deaf teacher that worked there (keyword- 'worked'). I never had a deaf teacher until college.

 

[LadySekhmet]

[/B]

As for the statement regarding changing eye colour, I have never heard such a stupid comparison in all my life. SIGHT is a sense, HEARING is a sense, being born deaf is not natural, it is very often caused by the some illness, either in mother or child so how can that be classed as natural. Yes the parents need to accept their child the way it is but that does not preclude trying to remedy, in any way possible, any one of the natural five senses.

LOVE that post!

 

[LadySekhmet]

Can you give me some understanding as to why the reading levels should be so low, when I would have thought they would be much higher owing to the dependence of the deaf on the written word. Are the literacy levels also going down for the general population, as is the case here in NZ.

Excellent question. I don't know WHY, but I think primarily it has to do with the education at the schools and outside of the home. Many people with low reading level, okay to poor English written skills is because they didn't get the education they deserved. Also, the majority of the people that *I* know (I'm not making a hasty generalization here saying that ALL of them :roll, that has poor reading/writing is because they went to deaf institutes. They do not get the interaction with their parents, instead it's with their peers. While they're a lot more social butterfly than me, they just don't get the education that they need especially in English and Math.
I never realized this until I arrived to college, and saw some of my deaf friends are very easy to talk to, wonderful signing skills that would make me jealous, but their English sucks (no offense). Quite a few of them never heard of Shakespeare, Catcher in the Rye, etc. They're used to writing things down similar to an ASL syntax, hence why. I would say a lot of the people that I know that has poor written English is because lack of interaction with their hearing parents' since they don't go home at night. There wasn't that many options regarding to placement of deaf children back then. Nowadays, interpreters can be provided to local schools, more mainstreaming schools are opening, etc. These options give a situation for the children to be home with their parents instead of being with their peers 24/7.

I'm not an avid reader, despite the 400+ books I have, but I can read pretty much anything except War and Peace (ugh! What was *I* thinking?!). I'm a visual person. I rather look at comics than trying to read Shakespeare. I rather read Harry Potter than Lord of the Rings (I definitely want to try though!).

I wonder if the children that still attend to ASD (American School for the Deaf), or any other residential deaf schools have gotten improved Education due to No Child Left Behind?

 

[LadySekhmet]

I agree with you 100%. The problem is that they give no real information about these CI kids they talk about their speech is not clear. I have met so many CI kids and there are couple that did have not very clear speech but it is because they were implanted after 6 years and that is the key. If you met my kids on the street you would never know that they were deaf since you cannot see their devices.

Prove it. Prove to me that being implanted early is the REASON why deaf children can speak very well.

I have very good speaking skills, and many times *I* have to tell people that I'm deaf, and they don't believe me until I show them my hearing aids, and I don't hide it. While I don't have 100% perfect speaking skills, no deaf person does, including your children. Heck, including many many many millions of hearing people. There's accents, there's dialects, there's lip movements (gawd, some are SO hard to understand!), etc. It's not just the DEAF people, but it's hearing people too.

I feel like I have to keep repeating myself...it all come down to EDUCATION! if you have a lousy speech therapy while growing up, you won't speak as well. It's that simple. Place an Asian child in Georgia, the child will have Georgian accent because that's where he grew up. It has nothing to do being deaf or BEING IMPLANTED! Place a deaf child within a Bi-Bi or TC environment WITH amazing speech therapy, you will get a well rounded deaf child that can speak fluently and write in English. Place the SAME child in a deaf institute with poor speech therapy, the child will have poor speaking skills.

While, I agree that being implanted does help with sounds, and probably speed up speech therapy, but it's definitely NOT the reason why they speak so well.
There's a few people that got CI as an adult, and they speak very well...I can name quite a few on this forums.

 

[deafdyke]

I did not said it was impossible to understand their speech. I said they quite often had issues with their speech

Yes, good point. Even kids who speak pretty well very often have voice clarity issues, tone, pitch and volumne issues.
And rick, the reason for your "ancedotal" data, is simple. You're automaticly exposed to the best of the best. Kids who don't do well orally, their families aren't gonna remain members of AG Bell. How much exposure have you had to bi-bi kids?

 

[VamPyroX]

VamPyro, are you a student or a professor at RIT. I am wondering because my daughter has expresses an interest of going to school there. Is it a good school, what programs would you say are good there.

Check your PM.

 

[VamPyroX]

I went to a TC school. I had speech therapy 2 or 3 times a week. When I got to 9 to 12 years old, instead of speech therapy I had English by myself. Due to the fact that I was 3 grades ahead of everyone in my class, and spoke very well. (THis is all individual basis, through IEP).

All of my teachers spoke and signed. Not ASL as you would think, but PSE/SEE language. I would think it's harder to speak in English and sign ASL because of the different language syntax.

I went through the same thing while growing up in school.

I grew up using MSS (more specific and strict than SEE). I was placed in mainstream classes with hearing students and interpreters. It wasn't until the 8th grade when I was 100% mainstreamed.

Myself (along with 2 other students) were at grade level while the rest of the deaf students were 3 to 7 grades behind.

As I got older, I began to meet more deaf students who were using ASL. I never understood why their grammar was bad. I understood their signing, but the grammar syntax was always wrong in accordance to proper English.

It wasn't until I went to college when I first heard "ASL". Finally, I began to understand what I was observing during those years.

I also had speech therapy. I went through speech therapy until the 6th grade.

 

[deafdyke]

Jackie, OT, but in the college hunt definitly focus on the schools that have strong dhh programs/populations. It's just too hard getting proper accomondations at a college that may only have a handful of dhh students. You usually end up with generic accomondations in those cases. Even today I STILL wish I'd gone to Gally or another strong Deaf school. And from what I recall there are a significent number of dhh students who, arrive at RIT with minimal fluency in Sign.

went to a TC school. I had speech therapy 2 or 3 times a week.

I have to say that I think that part of the problem with TC that a lot of hearing parents have, is that oral training can be marginalized in a TC program. If TC schools and programs could somehow improve their oral skill training departments, maybe a lot more hearing parents would be open to TC programs.

 

[flip]

I have to say that I think that part of the problem with TC that a lot of hearing parents have, is that oral training can be marginalized in a TC program. If TC schools and programs could somehow improve their oral skill training departments, maybe a lot more hearing parents would be open to TC programs.

Sounds clever, Deafdyke. Having a seperate focus, and divide the system into a speech department that can handle requests from worried parents, and a sign language deparment is so much simpler and professonial. But then, we suddenly have a bi-bi school

 

[Buffalo]

Thanks for sharing that with me. St. Rita has a very diverse student population. They have always drawn students from the international population. They also have a large percentage of multi-handicapped students, which makes their 80% success rate in turning out college ready graduates even more impressive.

My classmate is from Kenya (his parents came from India). He was staying with his uncle/aunt in Columbus and get to see his parents every two years. I remember him talking about his parents so much at the start of our junior year.

I would love to know more about the guy from Peru. Shel90, think you could find me his name and pm me? The other guy from St. Rita I know is Kevin Hall who graduated in 2000 and finished at OSU. His story: http://www.silent-fox.com/bio.html and I think he still is professional golfer.

 

[shel90]

What's funny, is when those children comes back for a reunion, half of them will know ASL, and you will find more than one terps, in addition feeling that you are part of a si-fi movie sometimes when listening to conversations. That have been the norm of oral reunions so far, but hey, I forgot it's "new and better" this time?

In my preschool class at that oral school for the deaf in AZ, there was 4 of us. All of us grew up orally and learned ASL in our 20s. Now, we are all activily involved in the Deaf community more than in the hearing world.

 

[Drew's Dad]

That's exactly what I am saying, they do not sound significantly different from other children, but there is a difference. This difference will increase as the children gets older. Sure you will understand them as grown up, but somehow, their voices are funny

I actually meant the difference between these 4-5 year old children's speech was insignificant, or imperceptible. In some cases, the deaf CI kids were well ahead of others their age in their ability to speak clearly and vocabulary because they had been in school for 3 years more than their hearing peers. Mileage may vary, of course.

 

[flip]

I actually meant the difference between these 4-5 year old children's speech was insignificant, or imperceptible. In some cases, the deaf CI kids were well ahead of others their age in their ability to speak clearly and vocabulary because they had been in school for 3 years more than their hearing peers. Mileage may vary, of course.

Ok, my mistake, but hope you are prepared for some surprises showing up before they turn 30.

 

[flip]

In my preschool class at that oral school for the deaf in AZ, there was 4 of us. All of us grew up orally and learned ASL in our 20s. Now, we are all activily involved in the Deaf community more than in the hearing world.

I am happy to hear you all are happy interacting with other people, and many deaf people does pretty well raised orally. But this all makes me feel that oralism really is a detour route to the deaf world.