Best way to develop oral skills?

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Daredevel7

Daredevel7

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I wanted to see people's opinion of how a deaf child's oral skills should be developed (if it should even be developed).

Personally, I don't think once a week speech therapy is enough. I think there should be different conversational interaction with people on a weekly (if not daily) basis. The earlier, the better. The therapist would have use his/her judgement to stop if there is no measurable progress.

Some people may think that this is overkill and wasting their time. What do you think? What is "enough" to you? At what point should it stop? Or should the development of oral skills be on hold for later, after the child has gained enough vocabulary?
 
For a minute there I thought this thread should have been over in the Penisarium section since you were asking about oral skills........:giggle:
 
Well I think daily speech therapy should be a part of developing oral skills.
Then slowly slow it down.
 
Byrdie714 said:
For a minute there I thought this thread should have been over in the Penisarium section since you were asking about oral skills........:giggle:
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Is that what you're hoping for? ;) If you have any advice to give..... tell us! (on another thread of course...)
 
I thought you would like a little humor in regards to oral skills. :giggle:
 
Daredevel7 said:
I wanted to see people's opinion of how a deaf child's oral skills should be developed (if it should even be developed).

Personally, I don't think once a week speech therapy is enough. I think there should be different conversational interaction with people on a weekly (if not daily) basis. The earlier, the better. The therapist would have use his/her judgement to stop if there is no measurable progress.

Some people may think that this is overkill and wasting their time. What do you think? What is "enough" to you? At what point should it stop? Or should the development of oral skills be on hold for later, after the child has gained enough vocabulary?
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Daredevil,

I am interpreting oral skills to mean developing speech and language, if you mean it otherwise let me know.

I agree that once a week is not sufficient, especially in the beginning but I think in addition to approximately 3 hours a week of S&L therapy other important considerations are as follows:
Making certain that the child has the appropriate HAs and if no benefit from HAs and qualifies, a CI AND wears them.
Strong parental involvement in both the S&L therapy and the most important, the follow-up at home. The home is where the real gains must be made. Take what is learned at S&L therapy and then re-enforce it at home and in everyday life.
Talk, talk, talk, and then read, read, read read and when done ,talk and read some more!
Expose your child to hearing peers so he can be exposed to and develop age appropriate oral skills from his peers.

As to when it should stop, there is no bright line test. We gradually phased it out over time till when it stopped completely after her junior year in high school but as she got older it always took a back seat to academics, social stuff, sports, etc.
Rick
 
I just think you need to view it as acquisition of a language. Would anyone here say that 20 minutes twice a week is enough exposure to ASL? Of course not. You need constant exposure, and immersion.
 
Good point Faire_jour.......but on the other hand, 24/7 immersain can be overkill. I think you need to find a happy medium of intense instruction, but at the same time don't go overboard.
 
deafdyke said:
Good point Faire_jour.......but on the other hand, 24/7 immersain can be overkill. I think you need to find a happy medium of intense instruction, but at the same time don't go overboard.
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I don't think all of the exposure needs to be "instruction", just like in any language, there is just interaction.

But yes, I think 24/7 is inappropriate. Especially for children who are to be bilingual. They need time in both languages, and it needs to be balanced.
 
faire_jour said:
I don't think all of the exposure needs to be "instruction", just like in any language, there is just interaction.

But yes, I think 24/7 is inappropriate. Especially for children who are to be bilingual. They need time in both languages, and it needs to be balanced.
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You are right, exposure is not the same as instruction. Just as you pointed out earlier, no one ever finds fault with signing to a child as much as possible but the first response to talking and reading aloud to the same child is that it is "instruction".

I am trying to stress the importance of actually interacting with your child by talking and reading to her as opposed to plopping her in front of the TV. My wife immersed my daughter in language by talking to her, not at her, and one of the great benefits is that today we still talk about everything with her.
 
rick
Agreed. However, the risk is that some parents may go overboard. It does seem like the type of parents who overprogram their kids, tend to be attracted to oral only AG Bell style programs. Sure there are some parents and families of kids who are doing OK orally......but doesn't it seem like a lot of AG Bell members tend to be kind of the stereotypical whitebread suburban acheiver type?
Look at the listing of colleges that AG Bell scholarship program winners get accepted to....overall they are to very highly selective colleges. Look at AG Bell's emphasis on private schooling etc.
 
deafdyke said:
Look at the listing of colleges that AG Bell scholarship program winners get accepted to....overall they are to very highly selective colleges. Look at AG Bell's emphasis on private schooling etc.
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DD,

I never understood why you said that parents of children who belong to AG Bell were considered to be suburban well-to-do families. Now I do. I wasn't aware of the fact that many AG Bell scholarship winners were accepted to above average colleges or that they emphasized education in a private school setting. Interesting...
 
Therapy alone isn't enough. When my daughter was young, we did private therapy 2-3 times a week. She loved having someone other than her family paying undivided attention to her for an hour, playing games and being silly. I was able to take what I learned in therapy and apply it at home, and we talked, talked, talked non-stop. We never just sat down at the table and drummed language into her for an hour, it was more: baking cookies and talking about it, playing a game and talking about it, or going for a walk and talking about it. It wasn't forced, and it wasn't work. We also read books to her every night (and now she reads them to me). That was the point of the therapy, to help us when we WEREN'T in therapy.

If you are making learning fun, I don't think you CAN go overboard. It's only when you take the fun away and make it all about work that you've gone overboard...
 
MomToDeafChild said:
Therapy alone isn't enough. When my daughter was young, we did private therapy 2-3 times a week. She loved having someone other than her family paying undivided attention to her for an hour, playing games and being silly. I was able to take what I learned in therapy and apply it at home, and we talked, talked, talked non-stop. We never just sat down at the table and drummed language into her for an hour, it was more: baking cookies and talking about it, playing a game and talking about it, or going for a walk and talking about it. It wasn't forced, and it wasn't work. We also read books to her every night (and now she reads them to me). That was the point of the therapy, to help us when we WEREN'T in therapy.

If you are making learning fun, I don't think you CAN go overboard. It's only when you take the fun away and make it all about work that you've gone overboard...
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Very good post and I totally agree with everything you said, I've always believes that oral is best done one-on-one on a daily basis ;)
 
Since I am not an expert in the field of speech, AVT, or oral deaf ed, I feel my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.

IMO, some children have the ability and some do not no matter how intensive therapy is.

Iam not even sure there is a best way anyway.

Byrdie...I can use tips from u for deleveloping good oral skills...j/k
 
shel90 said:
Since I am not an expert in the field of speech, AVT, or oral deaf ed, I feel my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.

IMO, some children have the ability and some do not no matter how intensive therapy is.

Iam not even sure there is a best way anyway.

Byrdie...I can use tips from u for deleveloping good oral skills...j/k
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I didn't answer this thread till now because I wasn't certain there was a best way. I'm no expert in speech or the other stuff either. However, I agree with you on this.
 
Yes, some children do not have the ability to speak/"listen" (whether it is through HAS/CIs or speechreading), but does this mean we should start developing oral skills by just "dabbling" in with bare minimum like once a week speech therapy? If they show progress, increase the intensity. If not, forget about it?
 
Daredevel7 said:
Yes, some children do not have the ability to speak/"listen" (whether it is through HAS/CIs or speechreading), but does this mean we should start developing oral skills by just "dabbling" in with bare minimum like once a week speech therapy? If they show progress, increase the intensity. If not, forget about it?
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Some of my deaf friends developed oral skills after they have establish a strong first language in ASL because English made sense to them which made speech classes easier and more motivating, or so what they tell me.

I don't think there is a good answer to this as far as I know.
 
shel90 said:
Some of my deaf friends developed oral skills after they have establish a strong first language in ASL because English made sense to them which made speech classes easier and more motivating, or so what they tell me.

I don't think there is a good answer to this as far as I know.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I think, once again, oral skills are being confused with, and equated to, language acquisition.
 
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