IndexWays Hearing Parents Can Help Deaf Children SucceedTelepracticeDirect ASL ClassesConclusionDeaf children face additional challenges when it comes to starting school. Most students arrive with language deprivation, American Sign Language (ASL). According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, more than ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents. (NICID 2018) This means that families lack the linguistic tools necessary to converse with their children on a daily basis and to educate them in what should be the child's native language. No matter how many speech therapy or lip-reading lessons a child receives, he or she will always be at a disadvantage in conversation: tone contributes to important aspects of the meaning of spoken language. Although deaf children can read body language and facial signals, they must be able to verify their interpretation of meanings, and ASL can offer them this avenue. The medical community has been telling parents for many years that introducing ASL (sign language) to the child before he or she learns English or how to speak will confuse the child and slow language acquisition. This couldn't be further from the truth. Just like children who speak bilingually, deaf children learn to code-switch, and using one language improves comprehension in the other. To enable the deaf child to make the same educational progress as his or her hearing peers, ASL instruction, and especially spelling in its various forms, must be introduced as early and as seamlessly as possible. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The current problem is twofold: Deaf students traditionally read at a lower grade level than their peers, and due to small groups of deaf children spread across the country, there are no significant studies or conclusions about what works and what it doesn't work in teaching deaf children to read. The main focus of society has been on oral production, thus enabling the child to become an adult capable of living in the hearing world. The most explicit instructions involve helping the deaf child to speak and read the lips of others to communicate. Deaf children spend hours in front of mirrors and with tongue depressors to learn the correct positioning of their lips and tongue to form words they cannot hear from others. While it is correct to say that the deaf child will need to adapt to his or her environment, the most necessary mode of communication has long been overlooked: reading. Reading in his second language, English, will be as necessary on a daily basis as lip reading. Whenever communication breaks down, or needs to be clear, the deaf adult resorts to writing down the need or request. This written form of communication is then read for understanding. The deaf adult is commonly at a fourth grade reading level, which can severely limit communication. This unfortunate fact is the strongest argument for raising a child's reading level to be on par with his or her hearing peers. The first thing to examine is how the deaf child is exposed to the building blocks of reading. Many families live in a literature-rich environment, having books around and modeling reading to the deaf child. These same families, despite being readers, do not encourage deaf children to read. (Stobbart 2018) The families involved in his study said that their preference and energy arewere spent teaching their children to talk and make friends rather than to sign or read together. The study consisted of a sample of 29 families whose preschool children attended state schools for deaf children. These parents do not integrate their children, so many also signed programs, but several families discouraged signing in part because siblings did not sign. Most families did not sit and read with the child and relied on gestures to communicate with the deaf child. For three to five years the child remained in an environment where he had to adapt and guess what was happening. The emphasis was on conversation and understanding the spoken language within the family context. This leaves the teaching of language and literacy to schools. Waiting all this time to receive instructions is the root of the deaf child's problem. Morere states: “A consistent finding in research is that a strong first language (L1) foundation (regardless of the language used for L1) is critical to reading success. ” (Morere, 2011) For most deaf children, spoken or written English is not the L1. Most deaf children who come to school do not have a strong L1. For some ASL was used, for others, reading lips and observing family members' gestures is the only way they have communicated with the outside world. Once all these children are brought into the same classroom, they need a unifying language. ASL is L1 which will bridge the gap between deaf children and allow them to excel in reading. Children born to hearing parents are at a serious disadvantage. Some families of children will learn some basic signs to communicate with their deaf members. ASL takes years to master, many families are unable or unwilling to put in the time or effort needed to master the language which is unfortunate for the deaf child because they do not have the opportunity to master their L1 before attend school as his hearing colleagues will. Furthermore, more importantly for his mental and social growth, he was deprived of 5 years of constant speech. Children continually acquire language, even before they are able to produce it themselves. Hearing parents talk to their hearing children all the time, in a constant babble of names, activities, and thoughts throughout the day. Even speech not addressed to the child is still processed and absorbed to learn the common and necessary sounds and combinations for English. The deaf child of a hearing family lacks these important clues and keys to acquiring his L1. The deaf child has no chance of learning English as his primary language because of his deafness, and due to his parents' inability, he cannot even have ASL as his L1. To put the deaf child on the same linguistic level as a hearing child, he or she would have to experience all of the same situations mentioned above, in ASL or typing. The lack of constant babbling of signing and spelling is what the deaf child needs to become a proficient signer. Deaf children born to deaf parents have better ASL and spelling models and opportunities, so they become better readers. The native speaker's level of fluency is what is needed to develop fluency in the child. Deaf children of hearing parents will lack the linguistic context of signing and spelling. Early understanding of spelling is that of a specialized sign. The child sees all the letters together and recognizes them not as individual letters, but as a whole. Later, when the child begins to write, the letters take shape and begin to haveown meanings. Loan words and lexicalized signs are viewed in this way. Because it is a more specialized form of ASL, the deaf child of hearing parents can only learn the neutral spelling and not the lexicalized forms used by native deaf people. Neutral fingerspelling is the spelling of names, places, or words that are not stylized or lexicalized into a “sign form.” If the deaf child's natural L1 is ASL, then the problem becomes clear. How can we give the deaf child, during the years of linguistic training, sufficient input to promote his growth? Since most deaf children come from hearing parents, the problem of learning ASL and correct spelling becomes the biggest obstacle to overcome. The disparate way in which deafness presents makes it difficult to carry out dedicated programs and studies. Mainstreaming is also an obstacle to overcome as many school districts do not have the staff or knowledge to effectively help prepare and recover the deaf reader. How deaf students learn to read is slowly beginning to be understood. Some deaf children are good readers, while others have difficulty acquiring this skill. The research concluded that learning to read for a deaf child involves a mix of ASL, fingertip handwriting, and English vocabulary, with the ability to recognize fingerwritten words as having the greatest correlation to the child's ability to read. child in third grade. For a deaf parent, spelling is not a problem. They know all the rules of finger-written words, and their child will learn the rules as easily as a hearing child learns basic grammar. The deaf child of hearing parents needs a tutor to teach him finger spells and work on his receptive skills. Because this skill is critical to understanding how words are broken down and new ones constructed, the hearing parent cannot afford not to seek out native signing situations so that the child can build a foundation for reading. Ways Hearing Parents Can Help Deaf Children SucceedThe Simple Solution to the problem of teaching deaf children to read is to teach them to sign. While some hearing parents find this to be a daunting task, it's only because they don't realize the challenges their children will face with communication. The hearing parent of a deaf child must realize that his or her child will never be able to hear normally or communicate in the same way as his or her siblings. Using ASL is no better or worse than speaking, it's just different. The same is true if the family adopted a child from another country who could never learn English. The family would adapt and work to include all members equally. Numerous studies and anecdotes show that this is not currently the norm in most families. This can no longer be allowed to remain the status quo. There are various paths that the family can take to help the deaf child: telepractice (distance education), and direct ASL lessons for both the parent and the child. With some simple instructions and guidance, families can support their deaf child through ASL. Telepractice In communities where there are no readily available resources, telepractice must become available. In rural towns that don't have a doctor, one is connected remotely to treat patients who can't get into the office. This same concept when applied to interventions is called Telepractice and several communities are looking to see if this could be a valuable resource for families of deaf children. With.