All that has been said about training the little deaf child to read the lip movements and associate them with the names of things and of actions, will apply also to the little boy who has suddenly been made deaf, after speech has been learned.  Be careful that he is looking at you always when you speak to him or reply to some question he has asked, but speak just as you would have done before he became deaf.  You may have to repeat things to him very often at first, but do not permit any sign of impatience in your face.  Do not let him get the idea that it is a hardship to talk to him.  Remember that you are changing his manner of understanding speech over to another way, and that his present and future happiness depends very greatly on the thoroughness and promptness with which it is done.  In all dealings with a deaf child the mother should remember that the child draws his impressions of the character and the feelings of those about him from the expression of their faces, and many almost unconscious little acts and gestures.  Avoid very carefully any appearance of being impatient, or bored, or contemptuous at his failures.  Try to understand the difficulties under which he is working to maintain his place in the world.  Do not humor his whims, or spoil him by indulgence, yet treat him with the greatest consideration and fairness.  Above all, be cheerful and, at least apparently, interested in his doings and sayings.

XVI

SCHOOL AGE

The question of what is “school age” for a deaf child is answered very differently by different people.  Most of the state institutions for the deaf in the United States, Canada, and Europe will not admit children younger than six years of age.  Seven years is still the age of admission in some institutions, but the tendency is to lower the age limit.  In some schools children of five are admitted, in a few those as young as four, and in two or three small schools babies of two and three are received.  Any statement here must, therefore, be taken as only the expression of the author’s opinion, resulting from more than twenty-five years of active teaching, combined with wide observation.

It would appear that, where home conditions are not bad, either physically or morally, the proper place for the little deaf child till he is nearly, or quite, five, is with his mother.  Very much can be done for the little one before he is five to prepare him for the instruction which should be given at that age, but it is possible for the mother to do what is necessary, and even the simplest home conditions are preferable for very little children to the institutional environment.  It is impossible, in a school of from one hundred to five hundred pupils, to create a real home environment, such as the very little child should have.  It is really a pity that the child of five should have to be placed in the institutional environment as it at present exists.  If the legislative bodies of our states, and the gentlemen who manage the schools, could only be induced to adopt the cottage plan of housing in small units, the disadvantages of institutional life would be enormously reduced.