Parental encouragement and support are two key components for learning outcomes in children with hearing issues. Coppens found parent support is vital in a child’s potential for learning vocabulary and accessing new topics.

Read: Hearing-Aids, Parent Input Boosts Kids’ Vocabulary

For tests with children, Coppens devised an online vocabulary test, ”Word for Word” for the Ultimate Vocabulary product from solutions firm, eReflect. This solution clearly shows how existing software code can be re-used to serve new markets, who gain multiple benefits from a redirected product.

More Reading

* Talk To Your Baby For A Solid Early-Learning Basis

* Parents’ Essential Role In Language Development

* Teaching Deaf Children To Listen And Speak

* What Exactly Does Oral Deaf Education Involve?

* One Language May Be Best For Kids With Implants

* New Words-App For Children With Hearing Devices

* Children Can Filter Background Noise With Practice

* A Surgeon’s Thirty Million Words Project Research

The IDK team knows of SNA requests for preschool-age infants with hearing issues – just when nature wants children to learn by playing, and exploring the world around them. A SNA at creche or preschool may be well-intended, but the child does not benefit from having an adult heed their every whim.

That’s why we need articles like “When Less Is More”:

Read: When Less Is More – Revolutionary Common Sense

Some hard-hitting questions in this text, include:

1. What if the child began a school year without a para-educator?
2. What if we allowed the child … to see what he can do on his own?
3. What [about trying] assistive technology and alternate methods of learning or curriculum modifications, with natural support from classmates and the classroom teacher [instead of a para-educator]?

Children gain autonomy, self-direction and inclusion with this strategy, says Kathie Snow, writer of this very honest piece.  If a para-educator is deemed necessary at the school, they should be guided by the student, as needed.

This hands-off strategy works throughout a person’s life, advises Snow, who adds, “Would you like someone next to you all the time, watching over you, helping you, keeping you ‘on-task’? Most of us would resist this intrusion.”

Individual education plans (IEPs) for children with hearing issues have a role in this process, by defining (1) what a child is to learn in a time-frame and (2) how a child will achieve this learning (with X hours of resource and/or speech teaching time, plus any other directed support that may be needed).

Planning is the only way to maximise resources and if a child has a head-start from early detection of hearing issues, early intervention (if needed), hearing devices and family interactions, they will settle into their school life.

More Reading

* The Visiting Teacher Service – Background Details

* The Effective Use of IEPs In Irish Classrooms

* Question: “Do Deaf Children Really Need A SNA?”

* Question: Can A Deaf Child Participate At Creche?

* Parent Question: School Resource Hour Allocation

* What To do If Your Child’s Support Hours Are Cut

* School Awareness Poem: I am deaf, and it is okay

Read >> Cochlear implants for babies?

After implantation, families need to work on the baby’s listening, speaking and vocabulary skills, while committing to appointments for implant tuning and reviews – but the upside is, getting to share sounds as a family group.

Read >> Implants gain popularity for deaf babies

Cochlear implants are now more accepted by the signing deaf community, as this piece shows – but some are still seeking to find that middle ground.

Read >> Cochlear implants change deaf culture

Most importantly, “there is a critical age at which children develop language – the more access to sound and communication the infant has, the easier it is to develop age-appropriate speech and language skills”, says speech teacher, Angi Martin-Prudent at Illinois State University.

Read >> Sound and communication vital for children

For prelingual children with cochlear implants, listening skills and spoken language are developed through family life and ongoing interaction between the child and their parents, with siblings, grandparents and other caregivers.

More Reading

* Cochlear implants – the full details

* Bilateral Cochlear Implants – Hearing With Two Ears

* Cochlear Implants Appreciated By Their Recipients

* ” What It Feels Like … to have a deaf child ” (Oliver Dennis)

When children learn and practice early social skills like turn-taking, sharing and interaction, with hand-eye coordination and early physical development, their exposure to rich language may ’stall’ as their attention goes elsewhere.

Read>> Role of Child Care In Developing Language Skills

Knowing that children with hearing issues need constant language-learning potential, especially outside the home – what can we do? One solution is to emphasise linguistic skills at the age of two to five, with childrens’ ability to learn cognitive language and social-emotional skills peaking at this time.

Check this chart with the five communication options for children. With hearing-devices and directed verbal interactions from under one year of age, most deaf childrens’ verbal skills will be similar to their hearing peers. Again, teaching approach will vary, based on a child’s communication option.

Teachers at a quality creche or preschool will interact with the children in rich and varied conversations that require creative thinking and responses. Ideally, the children will acquire a larger vocabulary by kindergarten, which in turn strengthens their reading and expressive skills before school starts.

Stories and songs linked to pictures and activities are one approach, as are objects and props to trigger the childrens’ curiosity. Play-acting is the ideal way to step into a new character and stretch a child’s imagination – which is fuelled in the first place by reading story-books and story-telling together.

More Reading

* Home-Preschool Supports: A Mum’s Positive Story

* Question: Can A Deaf Child Participate At Creche?

* Visual Learning In The Preschool & Primary Years (PDF file)

* Bilingual, Spoken Language At Home And School

* Creche/Preschool Environments

* Classroom Technology ‘Has The Children Talking’

* Deaf Children ‘Can Learn Their Family Language’

* After A Cochlear Implant – The Real Work Begins

Read: How Early Years Innovators Are Changing The Tech Game

Best of all, parents and caregivers can prompt conversations with their children by asking, “Show me what you made today [digitally]” with the resulting interactions giving rich language-development potential.

More Reading

* Talk To Your Baby For A Solid Early-Learning Basis

* Does Lip-Reading Benefit Infant Reading Ability?

* Parents’ Essential Role In Language Development

* Visual Learning In The Preschool & Primary Years (pdf file)

* Teacher Question: Reading And Listening On The iPad

* Touch-Screen Tech Boosts Literacy In Deaf Children

* Early Learning With Smart-Phones And Tablet PCs

Recently, the US state of Florida passed legislation for parents to be told of all the possible communication options for deaf children. This includes the listening-and-spoken language (auditory-verbal, also known as “the oral”) method, about which some parents seemingly were not being informed:

Read >> Communication choices for deaf children

For a chart of the five main communication options for families, see the PDF below. Where ASL is cited, parents in Ireland should read ‘ISL’, as relevant.

PDF >> Communication Options Reference Chart

What is auditory-verbal therapy (AVT)?

Auditory-verbal therapy is a specialised teaching approach for a child to learn to use the hearing they get from a hearing aid or a cochlear implant, for understanding speech and learning to talk.

AVT encourages babies and children to be mainstreamed from the start, with their hearing peers. The youngsters learn spoken-language structures from everyday interaction in these inclusive environments while developing their own self-monitoring skills to use in their local schools and communities.

Typically, parents in AVT programs don’t tend to learn sign language, but use their spoken language to interact and communicate with the children. Similarly, visual communication modes like sign language or cued speech are not part of an AVT program, but gesture may be used as a back-up.

More Reading

* Teaching Deaf Children To Listen And Speak

* The Sky’s The Limit, When Parents Are Informed (bilateral hearing)

* What Exactly Does Oral Deaf Education Involve?

* How Policy Can Lag The Grassroots Reality

* Listening And Speaking: A Link To Reading And Writing?

* Children Can Filter Background Noise With Practice

* Classroom Technology ‘Has The Children Talking’

Knowing most Hearing Dogs are trained in the UK, we suggested she contact (1) Emily Dogs in Clonakilty, Cork, and (2) Dogs for the Disabled in Cork, with whom IDK had discussed Hearing Dogs, two years previously.

By sheer luck, Dogs for the Disabled had a puppy to socialise for 12 months from December 2010, with a view to training him as a Hearing Dog. Deano (pictured) passed his sound training and qualified as a Hearing Dog in 2012.

Deano’s owner recently mailed IDK to thank us for making this connection with DfD. She explained how Deano gives reassurance when her husband is working night shifts. When the alarm clock sounds in the mornings for her own day job, Deano jumps onto the bed and nudges her until she wakes.

Sadly, Ger Dillon, founder of Dogs for the Disabled, passed away early in 2011 and it was only when Deano’s owner presented with his chip number, that DfD knew to train him as a Hearing Dog after his puppy socialising. We are all hugely grateful to Ger Dillon and her team, for the work they did.

NOTE: DfD’s waiting list has closed, due to phenomenal public demand.

More Reading

* A Hearing Dog Called Smudge

* “My hearing dog is a lifeline to the outside world”

* Hearing Dogs are changing childrens’ lives