Cut-up picture puzzles, painting books, tracing slates with large and simple designs cultivate observation and ingenuity.  Kaleidoscopes and stereoscopes are excellent, but moving pictures are so trying upon the eyes, and the air of the theaters is so bad, that a deaf child whose eyes are his only salvation, and whose health is doubly important, should not even know of their existence till he is seven or eight years old.

VIII

FURTHER TESTS OF HEARING

But, as soon as the mother finds her little child sufficiently mature to benefit by the sense training described above, whether it be at twenty or, as is more likely, at from twenty-four to thirty months, she can begin to make a more complete and accurate determination of the degree of his deafness, for now she can establish a system of responses on the part of the child that will show her when he perceives the sounds she uses in her tests.

In order to be certain that the little one knows what she wishes of him, she must begin with some sensation that she is sure he feels.  We will assume that he has as yet no speech, and cannot count, at least does not know the names of the numbers.  Let the mother pat him once on the shoulder and then cause him to hold up one of his little fingers.  Then pat him twice, and make him hold up two fingers, then three times and have him put up three fingers.  Now return to one pat and one finger, repeat two pats and the holding up of two of his fingers, and three pats and three fingers.  Go over and over this little game until he has grasped the idea and will hold up as many fingers as he feels pats.  Simple as the idea seems, it will often take a bright child some time to realize what you want him to do.  But you are sure that he feels the pats, whereas, if you began at once with sounds, you could not know whether his failure to respond was because he did not hear, or through not understanding what you expected of him.  He will weary of the exercise soon, and then mother may as well turn to something else till he has rested.

Having established this system of response on his part to sensations perceived, it is not difficult to shift from the number of pats to the number of times he hears a noise.  This once accomplished, tests can be made with sounds of different kinds, different pitch, and different volume, varying the distance, the instruments, and the vowel when the articulate sounds are reached.  He can be shown a whistle, then, when it is blown behind his back, he will hold up as many fingers as the times it was blown, if he perceives the sound.  He can be asked to distinguish between a whistle, a little bell, and the clapping of the hands.  When he is successful in that, the vowel sounds may be uttered not far from his ear, but behind him.  Begin with “ah” (ae), as this is the most open and strongest; then try “oh” (o with macron), which is not