Special needs of a Deaf Child

Special needs of a Deaf Child

Hearing defects cause a lot of problems ranging from language and vocabulary to comprehension and communication.

Physical Needs can be effectively taken care of by providing physical comfort to enable these children to improve their listening skills. Parents can help the child to locate sounds i.e, running of water to the tap or ringing of bell to the door. Intelligent parents can use playway techniques to help child recognize the sound e.g. hiding a musical toy and encouraging the child to look for it.

The child is helped to discriminate the sounds e.g. difference between father's and mother's voice, singing and crying etc.

The next step is the recognition of speech sounds. It is directly influenced by child's ability to use vision and other senses.

Emotional and Social Needs: As already studied suspicion is almost the second nature with deaf children. Consequently they get emotionally affected. Their social behaviour also needs to be improved and refined.

Need to Love and be Loved is as important for these children as it is for the blind. Love and affection provide emotional security besides the much needed encouragement for better learning.

Educational Needs involve child's ability to understand the languages. They learn to communicate through visual and manual means.

Oral Method or Lip-Reading is a special way of educating deaf children to identify sounds by watching the lip movement. It is slow method involving a lot of patience for the learner as well as the educator.

Manual Method or Sign Language helps the child to communicate with gestures, cues and finger-spellings. Have you ever watched on T.V. the news bulletin meant specially for deaf and dumb?

Need to be Independent is of utmost importance to the deaf child. It reduces his/her dependency on parents, and siblings. The ability to be independent makes them important components of the society they live in. Invention of hearing aids have provided the much need relief to the deaf.