新疗法帮助聋儿重返有声世界(English)
http://www.100md.com
2000年8月17日
A NEW therapy has arrived from America that promises to help teach deaf children to speak so well that they can attend mainstream school and take their place in the hearing world.
The technique is known as auditory verbal therapy or AVT. It differs in two ways from existing methods of teaching deaf children to communicate.
The emphasis is entirely on speech. The child is not taught to sign or to lip-read. Once hearing aids have been fitted, children are actively coaxed to listen to their parents' voices, and to learn what sounds mean.
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Secondly, the AV therapist does not work directly with the child and thus circumvent the parents, but works through them. The deaf child's mother and father are trained to teach their baby to speak. AVT places the parents in the centre of their child's world, instead of on the sidelines while the professionals take over.
Like many "new" imports from the US, AVT has been around for 30 years. It has been enthusiastically embraced in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. As yet, however, there is only one accredited AV therapist in the UK.
, 百拇医药
Her name is Jacqueline Stokes, and last autumn she set up Britain's first AVT programme from her home in Oxford. Stokes trained at McGill University in Montreal, under the AVT guru Daniel Ling. She returned to Britain to work in the NHS with deaf infants. Now she sees ten families privately, and advises education authorities wanting to improve services for deaf children.
The key, says Stokes, is teaching the deaf child to listen. "For ages there has been an assumption that if you fit hearing aids on a child then your job is done. But it is not enough just to assume the baby is listening: you have to teach them to listen."
, http://www.100md.com
Petra Durham is three and attends a private nursery school. She has the vocabulary of a normal three-year-old but her understanding of language is a year ahead of her age.
Petra went deaf after contracting meningitis at 11 months. She left hospital in May 1998 extremely weak, and in September her parents, David and Virginia, realised she couldn't hear.
Tests showed she was profoundly deaf in one ear and moderately to severely deaf in the other. The Durhams were determined to do everything in their power to help her to live a normal life, but even after Petra was fitted with the latest digital hearing aid in January 1999, she did not start the usual infant babbling. Afraid she would never speak, the Durhams decided to contact Jacqueline.
, 百拇医药
"I went in thinking there was no hope," said Mr Durham. "What did the future hold if she couldn't hear anything? She had lost her hearing before she had acquired speech.
"By the end of the first session Jacqueline actually had our daughter saying a few words and enjoying speaking. We didn't think it was possible, we didn't think she knew what the words were or could say them. But I came out thinking: 'There is hope'."
Now Virginia and Petra travel to Oxford every Friday, where Jacqueline shows them what to explore next. Every night Virginia does an hour's preparation, and the next morning she and Petra spend an hour and a half working on her speech.
, 百拇医药
Her teacher wears an FM transmitter so that Petra can pick up her voice amid the background noise of the classroom even when the teacher's head is turned away.
The other day Petra complained about having to wear hearing aids. Her dad said that other kids had to wear glasses and laughed when Petra replied with dignity: "I can hear perfectly well without my hearing aids." It was such a long way from the dark days when he feared that talking to his child might be restricted to halting exchanges in sign.
, http://www.100md.com
"That's how far we have come, and I think it is largely thanks to AV therapy," said David.
Stokes warns that AVT is successful only if a child has some residual hearing that can be boosted with hearing aids or implants. The therapy requires considerable commitment from the parents, and some prefer to leave their child's development to the professionals.
"I have heard AVT referred to as the yuppie therapy," said David. "If you are unable to do the homework every night and put in the time the following morning, you can't do it."
, http://www.100md.com
Many parents who are deaf themselves do not put a high priority on their deaf child learning to speak. They do not see deafness as a deficiency, but rather as part of the child's cultural identity.
But 90 per cent of parents with deaf children are not hearing impaired. Like the Durhams, they think of the world as a hearing one from which their child has been excluded by a medical problem. They are desperate to know their child might one day be able to talk and go to college like other children. For these parents, AVT may have a lot to offer., http://www.100md.com(JENNY BOOTH )
The technique is known as auditory verbal therapy or AVT. It differs in two ways from existing methods of teaching deaf children to communicate.
The emphasis is entirely on speech. The child is not taught to sign or to lip-read. Once hearing aids have been fitted, children are actively coaxed to listen to their parents' voices, and to learn what sounds mean.
, 百拇医药
Secondly, the AV therapist does not work directly with the child and thus circumvent the parents, but works through them. The deaf child's mother and father are trained to teach their baby to speak. AVT places the parents in the centre of their child's world, instead of on the sidelines while the professionals take over.
Like many "new" imports from the US, AVT has been around for 30 years. It has been enthusiastically embraced in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. As yet, however, there is only one accredited AV therapist in the UK.
, 百拇医药
Her name is Jacqueline Stokes, and last autumn she set up Britain's first AVT programme from her home in Oxford. Stokes trained at McGill University in Montreal, under the AVT guru Daniel Ling. She returned to Britain to work in the NHS with deaf infants. Now she sees ten families privately, and advises education authorities wanting to improve services for deaf children.
The key, says Stokes, is teaching the deaf child to listen. "For ages there has been an assumption that if you fit hearing aids on a child then your job is done. But it is not enough just to assume the baby is listening: you have to teach them to listen."
, http://www.100md.com
Petra Durham is three and attends a private nursery school. She has the vocabulary of a normal three-year-old but her understanding of language is a year ahead of her age.
Petra went deaf after contracting meningitis at 11 months. She left hospital in May 1998 extremely weak, and in September her parents, David and Virginia, realised she couldn't hear.
Tests showed she was profoundly deaf in one ear and moderately to severely deaf in the other. The Durhams were determined to do everything in their power to help her to live a normal life, but even after Petra was fitted with the latest digital hearing aid in January 1999, she did not start the usual infant babbling. Afraid she would never speak, the Durhams decided to contact Jacqueline.
, 百拇医药
"I went in thinking there was no hope," said Mr Durham. "What did the future hold if she couldn't hear anything? She had lost her hearing before she had acquired speech.
"By the end of the first session Jacqueline actually had our daughter saying a few words and enjoying speaking. We didn't think it was possible, we didn't think she knew what the words were or could say them. But I came out thinking: 'There is hope'."
Now Virginia and Petra travel to Oxford every Friday, where Jacqueline shows them what to explore next. Every night Virginia does an hour's preparation, and the next morning she and Petra spend an hour and a half working on her speech.
, 百拇医药
Her teacher wears an FM transmitter so that Petra can pick up her voice amid the background noise of the classroom even when the teacher's head is turned away.
The other day Petra complained about having to wear hearing aids. Her dad said that other kids had to wear glasses and laughed when Petra replied with dignity: "I can hear perfectly well without my hearing aids." It was such a long way from the dark days when he feared that talking to his child might be restricted to halting exchanges in sign.
, http://www.100md.com
"That's how far we have come, and I think it is largely thanks to AV therapy," said David.
Stokes warns that AVT is successful only if a child has some residual hearing that can be boosted with hearing aids or implants. The therapy requires considerable commitment from the parents, and some prefer to leave their child's development to the professionals.
"I have heard AVT referred to as the yuppie therapy," said David. "If you are unable to do the homework every night and put in the time the following morning, you can't do it."
, http://www.100md.com
Many parents who are deaf themselves do not put a high priority on their deaf child learning to speak. They do not see deafness as a deficiency, but rather as part of the child's cultural identity.
But 90 per cent of parents with deaf children are not hearing impaired. Like the Durhams, they think of the world as a hearing one from which their child has been excluded by a medical problem. They are desperate to know their child might one day be able to talk and go to college like other children. For these parents, AVT may have a lot to offer., http://www.100md.com(JENNY BOOTH )