Word: myklebust
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...today there are between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000 U.S. children who are either partially or totally deaf. How can their parents teach and help them? In a new book, Your Deaf Child (Charles C. Thomas; $2.50), Helmer Myklebust, Northwestern University audiology professor, gives some primer-clear answers...
Leave a Light. First of all, says Myklebust, parents must find out just what sort of deafness their child has. A few "deaf" children actually have perfect hearing, but because of psychological tensions, choose neither to speak nor to hear. Some children-the aphasiacs-can hear, but because of injury to the brain, can make no sense from the sounds about them and gradually come to ignore sound entirely. Other children can hear a few sounds, but not those in the range of ordinary speech. Still others hear nothing...
...silent world in which the deaf child lives is not easy for parents to understand. If the child loses his hearing at two or three, he will suddenly feel cut off. "Often he cries easily," says Professor Myklebust, "and tries in other ways to show you that he feels lonely and sad . . . Remember that when the lights are turned out at night he has no contact with you." Hearing nothing, and seeing nothing as well, he will be afraid. "During this time that he is learning to live without sound it is wise to use a night light...
...Best Thing. Faced with their child's deafness, says Professor Myklebust, some parents become overprotective, allow the child to play tyrant, fail to prepare him for the problems ahead. Other parents take the opposite extreme; they make no allowances for the child, confront his handicap with open hostility. Still other parents weep in front of the child, drag him to specialist after specialist for further treatment...
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