Fifteen principles outlined as a guide for parents and teachers who want to share the pleasure of reading with deaf children.

A mother whose child has had a cochlear implant tells Laura Mauldin why enrollment in the sign language program at her daughter’s school is plummeting: “The majority of parents want their kids to talk.” Some parents, however, feel very differently, because “curing” deafness with cochlear implants is uncertain, difficult, and freighted with judgment about what is normal, acceptable, and right. Made to Hear sensitively and thoroughly considers the structure and culture of the systems we have built to make deaf children hear. Based on accounts of and interviews with families who adopt the cochlear implant for their deaf children, this book describes the experiences of mothers as they navigate the health care system, their interactions with the professionals who work with them, and the influence of neuroscience on the process. Though Mauldin explains the politics surrounding the issue, her focus is not on the controversy of whether to have a cochlear implant but on the long-term, multiyear undertaking of implantation. Her study provides a nuanced view of a social context in which science, technology, and medicine are trusted to vanquish disability—and in which mothers are expected to use these tools. Made to Hear reveals that implantation has the central goal of controlling the development of the deaf child’s brain by boosting synapses for spoken language and inhibiting those for sign language, placing the politics of neuroscience front and center. Examining the consequences of cochlear implant technology for professionals and parents of deaf children, Made to Hear shows how certain neuroscientific claims about neuroplasticity, deafness, and language are deployed to encourage compliance with medical technology.

This second edition of Developing Listening and Talking, Birth to Six remains a dynamic compilation of crucially important information for the facilitation of auditorally-based spoken language for today's infants and young children with hearing loss. This text is intended for graduate level training programs for professionals who work with children who have hearing loss and their families (teachers, therapists, speech-language pathologists, and audiologists.) In addition, the book will be of great interest to undergraduate speech-language-hearing programs, early childhood education and intervention programs, and parents of children who have hearing loss. Responding to the crucial need for a comprehensive text, this book provides a framework for the skills and knowledge necessary to help parents promote listening and spoken language development. This second edition covers current and up-to-date information about hearing, listening, auditory technology, auditory development, spoken language development, and intervention for young children with hearing loss whose parents have chosen to have them learn to listen and talk. Additions include updated information about hearing instruments and cochlear implants and about ways that professionals can support parents in promoting their children's language and listening development. Information about preschool program selection and management has been included. This book is unique in its scholarly, yet thoroughly readable style. Numerous illustrations, charts, and graphs illuminate key ideas. This second edition should be the foundation of the personal and professional libraries of students, clinicians, and parents who are interested in listening and spoken language outcomes for children with hearing loss.

Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date reviews of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned chapters from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives on a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Book jacket.

The second edition of this guide offers a readable, comprehensive summary of everything a parent or teacher would want to know about raising and educating a deaf child. It covers topics ranging from what it means to be deaf to the many ways that the environments of home and school can influence a deaf child's chances for success in academic and social circles. The new edition provides expanded coverage of cochlear implants, spoken language, mental health, and educational issues relating to deaf children enrolled in integrated and separate settings. Marschark makes sense of the most current educational and scientific literature, and also talks to deaf children, their parents, and deaf adults about what is important to them. Raising and Educating a Deaf Child is not a "how to" book or one with all the "right" answers for raising a deaf child; rather, it is a guide through the conflicting suggestions and programs for raising deaf children, as well as the likely implications of taking one direction or the other.