Advice from the experts – other parents!

Using sign language
“Signing is too valuable a tool in educational settings not to be considered. It provides deaf children with information they would otherwise be deprived of if they received an oral-only education, no matter how excellent their communication abilities.

I now feel that using signing allowed our daughter to learn lip patterns and learn English grammar. I think she has actually become much more fluent in spoken English language because she used signing in the early years.”

Teach the words
"In the beginning they don’t have the words so you have to teach them…you really need to actively teach a deaf child so as to help him or her…to manage the frustration created by the deafness and by the lack of being able to express feelings."

“Because of all the input at an early stage – we’ve given him the words, given him the signs – he’s now able to actually name his feelings and pinpoint them.”

“If you can find a topic your child is interested in, it opens up a whole world of language development. My son learned the signs for colours and numbers through his love of trains and Thomas the Tank Engine.”

“One of our biggest worries as parents is always how to warn your children about dangers and with a deaf child it is so much harder because they don’t hear you or they don’t hear you properly. The best way to warn him of the dangers…is to enact the situation.”

“A lot of focus with deaf kids is on their education and how well they’re speaking, or not speaking or signing or not signing. I think sometimes the focus can be taken off the emotional health of the child. We can get so excited “Oh they said a word” – but you know if they’re miserable, what’s the point?”

“I had been given some very useful information which was: ‘little boys play on the floor and push cars along and they don’t look at faces’ so that makes speech development rather more difficult. So we got a long low table, got rid of our dining table…and that was the train track.”

“Often the first time a deaf person will hear something is when something’s repeated and may be they only hear it on the fourth repetition and someone might be scowling with frustration.”

“It doesn’t matter whichever method of communication you choose, that’s for you to decide, but it is really important that there is some form of communication going on between yourself and your child.”

“I think it’s important for her to be with hearing children, but much more important to be with deaf children – and so she goes to the deaf youth club.”