Don't Stop At Car...

Language, language, language...pretty descriptive, right? Allow me to paint a picture of the lives of two fictional children; one hearing and one deaf. Let's say the children both are 5 year old and have both parents at home.  The deaf child is born to two hearing parents. While wanting to do whatever is necessary to raise their child the best they can, they are not able to fluently communicate with their child at this point. They use a handful of home signs to communicate with each other.
The parents of the hearing child talk to their child daily. They often have the radio on while in the car, and have the television on throughout the day. Their next door neighbors have two children around the same age as their child; so both the children often play together. At night, the parents take turns reading with their child before bedtime.
The parents of the deaf child have a very similar day. They too listen to the radio in the car, leave the television on throughout the day, and allow their child to play with the neighbors children. The parents even put captions on the television in hopes that some sort of language will be soaked up. The obvious difference in both children is that regardless of the amount of opportunities for language exposure for the deaf child, the child is not developing language at any rate that will keep him on track with his hearing peers. Outside of the direct interaction the deaf child has with language, a deaf child is not exposed to the secondary language that takes place in their lives. For example; the television that is on in the background as the child is playing with blocks, the conversation that the parents are having in the other room, and the millions of other opportunities for a child to overhear conversation are missed out on. Regardless of whether or not the hearing child who is able to hear all of this is able to comprehend all of the language that is being used, they are able to benefit from the exposure. The hearing child hears the structure in language, the tone when certain topics are discussed, and the inflection that is used during the use of certain parts of speech.
My point is this...when we have the opportunity to work with a deaf child, make sure we are taking our questioning a step further. For example, if you ask a deaf child the sign for car, don't stop there. Ask them how many doors it has. Ask them how many colors they see on the car. Ask them what windshield wipers are. Ask them why a tire feels differently than the hood of a car. Ask them why tires have tread. If we settle simply for "car", then we are allowing the gap between language rich peers to widen. We must be willing to take them to depths in language that no one has taken them before. With their parents, neighbors, and almost everyone else they come in contact with being unable to do so...if not you, then who?

Hope you had a fantastic summer,

Brian