Customer Reviews

Raising and Educating a Deaf Child

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a most practical, sensitive book that is appealing for educators as well as families of deaf children. The author is renowned for his work in cognition and psychology, but demonstrates a wonderful understanding of deaf children through the eyes of an individual who seems to know their needs first hand. Any parent or teacher reading this book will get a sense of the complexities involved in raising a deaf child, but will also get a sense of hope and support for developing appropriate
guidance and nurturing. The author makes sure to speak to his audience as one among them and offers a wealth of advice regarding educational possibilities to audiological support to socio-emotional growth.

This is an unassuming book that provides light at the end of the tunnel. Honest and sincere.

This is the book you are looking for if you are the parent of a Deaf child. Tons of good information that is based on fact and not prejudice. The only negative thing I can say is the book was designed for the educated professional type of parent and includes advanced vocabulary and smallish print. You won't find illustrations, checklists or simplified information. Very excellent material that should help parents make informed decisions rearing their Deaf child. This is the kind of information that helped me to raise my own Deaf son who is now a happy and successful adult.

I read this book 13 years ago when my son was diagnosed with severe-profound hearing loss. It was excellent! I had so many people trying to push me this way or push the opposite way for his language, education etc. I knew that I had to be armed with knowledge and that's what I found in this book. It gave me the courage to pursue total communication with our young son. He is now a normal 14 year old (however normal a teenager can be). He has the ability to sign with his friends that use ASL (or Pidgin), but he is oral with us, his family and hearing friends. I have recommended this book to several families, and am now purchasing another copy to give to an acquaintance that just found out their son is hearing impaired. Of all the books I read so many years ago, this is one of only two that I can recall. It made that much of an impact on me! (By the way, the other was called "Deaf Like Me" and it was the story of a little girl that was deaf...also an excellent read!)

His research is lacking greatly and his opinion that deaf children cannot read as well as hearing children is ludicrous. This 'know it all' professor is not perspicacious enough to understand the real workings of the deaf child's mind and all they actually do understand.
My recommendation is to look elsewhere if you want someone who is knowledgable in the area of deaf studies.

In an excerpt I read, "Still to be determined is how reading skills of children using Cued Speech compare to children learning sign language or some hybrid, like Signed English"

This book was published in 1998. They have plenty of research now--over forty years' worth, to show the efficacy of Cued Speech. I would have to wonder how much of the rest of the book is outdated as well.

This book gave me some good perspective on working with my deaf students. It did gives many opinions that I disagree with in the course of my own studies.

This book claims to be a resource on the choises for educating your deaf child. It is not. The entire book focuses on using ASL as the means of communicating with your child. That would not be bad- if it didn't present itself as an unbiased book. After it says that ASL should be used, it then makes you feel worse by saying that if you are a hearing parent with a deaf child, you probably won't become that fluent in it anyway. There aren't references either- so I am not sure where the author gets his information. It may be true, but there should footnotes on many of the claims. If you do choose to read this book, don't make it the first book you read after you find out your child is deaf. That is what I did and all it did was depress me. In truth, I haven't finished it and probably will leave it on the shelf to pick up after I finish a few others.