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Dealing with deafness can be hard, but you are not alone. This website provides information that may answer many of your challenging questions about hearing loss.
A Parent Guide to Hearing Loss
American Sign Language:
A visual language. Shape, placement,movement, facial expressions, and body movements all play a vital role when communicating. Like English, ASl follows its own grammar rules and syntax.
PROS:
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Provides a full visual language to deaf children, giving them access to the language of instruction for deaf children
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Common language of the Deaf community
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Deaf children who learn ASl have easy access to the Deaf community
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May be a good option for profoundly deaf children who do not qualify for hearing aids or cochlear implants.
CONS:
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Deaf children are limited to communicate in ASL
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In order to speak to a person who is hearing, an interpreter would be necessary if the other person doesn't know ASL
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Many parents cannot learn ASL profecient enough to communicate with their deaf child
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Learning ASL can be difficult for some parents because of the different sentence structure and syntax from English.
Total Communication:
TC is a philosophy of educating children with hearing loss that incorporates all means of communication; formal signs, natural gestures, finger spelling, body language, listening, lip reading, and speech.
PROS:
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It opens up language modes and venues for deaf children
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It has benefits to a child's development including psychological, linguistic, and academic
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It gives access to parents when determining how they want to communicate with their child.
CONS:
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It may not be put into practice correctly in certain situations
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Teachers are sometimes limited to how many different methods they can use at once
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It may be difficult for a teacher to meet all the communication needs for a class of deaf and hard of hearing students
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One mode of communication will be dropped due to the difficulty in signing and speaking concurrently.
American Sign Language
Total Communication
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