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2. The oralist model 3.1. Professional intervention The day after the hearing test the head of the service for children with sensory needs came to see us at home to tell us about the support that was available. They said that they would help us teach Shauna to speak. She would go to mainstream school and would learn to mix with hearing children so that she could “pick up language”. The purpose was to make her “be accepted into the hearing world”. A specialist teacher of the deaf would visit us at home every week to help us communicate with Shauna. The visits would start a couple of weeks later after the Christmas holiday. At that time we both felt relieved and comforted at the thought that there was support out there and that Shauna’s “problem” could be solved. We felt positive again and really looked forward to the first visit from the teacher of the deaf. But things took a different turn. My husband’s diary entry bout the teacher’s first visit speaks for itself: 5th May 1991: “Tried to be as polite as possible with A. Found out fairly quickly that she really had no worthwhile information concerning Shauna or her education. Comments such as: “Shauna can always learn sign later on in life. We have to try to get Shauna into the hearing world”. She has a basic ignorance of the issues. She doesn't sign...doesn't want to. Don't want to upset her, as she seems to be the only teacher available. Felt no support from her - arrogant attitude and ignorant with it. I think she feels threatened that we are educated.” A whole host of professionals also got involved: head of service, speech and language therapist, educational psychologist, consultant audiologist. By then we had read about sign language and Deaf people and had become convinced of the need to sign with Shauna. Our local ‘experts’ on deafness believed they knew what was best for Shauna and kept putting pressure on us to change our minds. The home visits soon became very intruding and disruptive. We felt that the service had nothing relevant to offer us or Shauna. 3.2. Impact on parent-child interactionThe oralist model rests on negative and contradictory principles. The main concern is with the child’s hearing loss and how to improve residual hearing. The child is labelled “hearing impaired” – a deviance from the norm, yet parents are urged to treat him/her like a hearing child. The advice is “make sure the child wears the hearing aids on all the time” and “speak all the time”. On the practical level this is just impossible. What about situations when the child does not wear the hearing aids – in the bath, in the car, at times of illness? What about keeping the hearing aids on the child’s ears? (they tend to flop about a lot). What about parents’ worries that the hearing aids might be too loud or might hurt the child? What about the hearing aids whistling constantly on an active crawling young baby, or when the parents cuddle the child? What are parents supposed to do when their deaf child does not understand what they are saying? How do they deal with the child’s frustration? Parents are simply told that they need to persevere until the child eventually accepts to wear the hearing aids and comes to understand what they are saying. So a considerable time is spent concentrating on making the child accept the hearing aids before the actual speech training can begin. Professionals reiterate the need to speak all the time, to surround the child with words, to describe everything that they are doing so that the child will learn words. Imagine the types of monologue: “Look I’m turning the light on. Look at the light. It’s on now. I’m turning the light off now”, or “I take the bread, I take a knife, oh look I’m opening the drawer now, here’s the knife, I put some butter on the bread with the knife, look I am making a sandwich!” This is difficult to sustain, but more importantly it is obviously boring to the child and it is certainly not fulfilling a communication purpose. Parents want to speak to their child for communication and two-way interaction. With this model parents turn into speech machines whose purpose is to teach language. On the emotional level, we could not come to terms with the concept of talking to our daughter whilst knowing that she could not hear us. Furthermore we had accepted that Shauna was different but nonetheless equal and felt that there was something wrong in imposing this strict regime on her when there was a gentle alternative that was suited to her visual strength i.e. sign language. Professional intervention of this type has a very damaging effect at a time when the family feels vulnerable. The strict rules prescribed by professionals impede on normal parent child interaction and do not take account of parents’ practical and emotional concerns at this early stage.
Proponents of oralism display vast ignorance of language acquisition by children in general and by deaf children. They tell parents that language delay in deaf children is acceptable whilst the literature on language acquisition for hearing children tells otherwise. They confuse speech and language. After reading books, talking to Deaf organisations and some Deaf researchers it had become clear to us that the best option for Shauna was to become bilingual. We knew that sign language was the most suited language for her to develop as a happy and intelligent deaf child, and that it would also help her to learn English at a later stage. The reply was that bilingualism was confusing for children and that deaf children needed to learn to speak first. Sign language was presented to us as a last resort in case a deaf child does not manage to learn to speak (we were told that should Shauna fail to speak by the time she was 5 or 6 she could learn sign language then). Proponents of oralism acknowledge that learning to speak is difficult for the majority of deaf children. They emphasise that it is going to be hard work for the parents and for the child yet they are unable to give any guarantee of success and concede that some deaf children will only acquire a basic functional ability to use spoken English. This uncertain vision of the future offers a depressing framework for parents. This together with professional information that that communicating with the deaf child in sign language will impede acquisition of speech puts tremendous pressure on parents to accept oralism as the only apply the “speak all the time” rule. Emphasis on hard work for the child may not be easy for parents to accept. Why should a little child have to adapt? Surely it should be adults that have to adapt to the child? Parents have the ability to adapt. If they have a child in a wheelchair, they are not going to force him/her to walk but will adjust their home and their way of life to suit the child’s needs. Why should it be different with deafness? With the right support parents will do anything for their children. The professionals whom we met had a very negative attitude to the Deaf community. They told us that deaf people can only be successful if they speak. They spoke with great admiration of oral deaf people (deafened in fact!) such as the MP Lord Ashley or Evelyn Glennie (the famous percussionist). They urged us to visit oral schools and put us in touch with families with successful oral deaf children. They described the signing Deaf community as a tiny minority group who chooses to isolate themselves. They told us that we would “lose Shauna to the Deaf community” if we signed with her. We did not mind, we were happy with the idea of Shauna joining the Deaf community, we felt that she needed it, and she could be part of both the hearing and the Deaf world. But to most parents this is a scary thought at this vulnerable time. We became increasing annoyed with people telling us that there was something wrong with Shauna. We found it insulting and painful, intolerant and disrespectful of our daughter and of Deaf people. So ironically their arrogant and disrespectful attitude put us on the right track. We both had an intuitive feeling that deafness was part of Shauna’s identity and that she should be respected in her difference. She was perfect in our eyes. We were told that we were denying her deafness! As parents we simply wanted Shauna to have a happy childhood, to have the same experiences as any other child, to grow up intelligent and to have a good education. We wanted to be able to communicate with her straight away. Sign language was the way to achieve all this, and English could develop later. Then it suddenly dawned on us that all the people who had been involved were hearing. We felt that we needed to hear Deaf people’s side of the story. So we looked for advice elsewhere. We found out that there were schools that used sign language, that there was a local Deaf club where deaf people met regularly, a British Deaf Association, a Royal National Institute for Deaf people. Nobody in the service had told us about them. All these organisations agreed that sign language was the best route to follow. We were desperate to learn and eagerly read their literature as well as any book we could lay our hands on. We visited the Deaf club and met some Deaf people. Then ensued two years of endless battles with our local educational authority (LEA) in order to obtain signing provision for our family. We were given no support in learning sign language. We also got involved in setting up a signing playgroup at the local Deaf club so that we could meet Deaf adults and Shauna could interact with other people in sign language. By the time Shauna was 2 and a half we went through the process of her Educational Statement of Special Needs. After months spent demanding sign language support for her we had to resign ourselves that our LEA would not provide it. We were told that if we were not happy with the service we could move somewhere else! The pressure became too much when I became pregnant with our second child. We visited various signing schools and eventually gave up our home and jobs and moved to Derby as we were struck by the positive attitudes to deafness there. |
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