IHF’s staff includes therapist-teachers specially trained in working with deaf children. Our teachers dedicate time at one-on-one sessions with each student—

• Developing age-appropriate auditory skills and clear speech in very young hearing impaired children.
• Providing individualized therapy that will stimulate the child’s audition, language and cognition.
• Developing age-appropriate social skills so that young hearing-impaired children grow up to have hearing friends.
• Providing a well-balanced extra curricular programme to enhance motoric development of young hearing-impaired children, as also their skills in singing, music, art and craft.
• Providing continued support through therapy to hearing-impaired children who have been integrated into the educational mainstream.

Enrolment

I Hear Foundation runs an early-intervention programme. It focuses on working with pre-lingual, hearing-impaired babies below eighteen months of age with mild, severe or profound hearing loss and their families whose environmental language is English or Marathi.

Children below 18 months of age are considered for enrolment at the Foundation on the merits of their individual situations.

Today, 35 children from across the country, including as far away as Surat, New Delhi and Assam, attend IHF’s early-intervention program.

Religion, caste and sex are not criteria for admission at the I Hear Foundation

Why Early Intervention

Human beings are pre-programmed for speech. The human ear responds to sounds in-utero at 20 weeks. Every newborn possesses this hearing and speech potential. This does not necessarily mean that they grow into high-functioning children. For the auditory area of the brain to develop, children must receive systematic auditory stimulation through direct and meaningful experiences.

This ‘auditory living’ is even more crucial for children born with a hearing loss. Delayed auditory stimulation results in inefficient language facilities. A baby deprived of appropriate language stimulation during the first three years of life may never fully attain optimal language function.

Early intervention uses the plasticity of the infant brain to stimulate auditory and neural pathways. Appropriate early amplification allows infants to commence auditory living and gives them opportunities they otherwise might never have—to listen, to learn, to enjoy life. It gives them the freedom of choice.

Difference between Language and Speech

Language is a code consisting of symbols ordered in a particular sequence for the purpose of conveying information. Language development is not dependent on speech development.

“Language deals with understanding a means of communication, whether spoken, written, signed or finger spelled. “Speech” by contrast refers specifically to the clear production of a spoken message. By definition, therefore, development of language precedes that of speech, as there needs to be a foundation of comprehension, from which a spoken message can emerge.”

Speech is an audible manifestation of language. Speech development is dependent on language development.

Language is different from speech. Language is a code made up of a group of rules that include:

• What words mean
• How to make new words (friend, friendly, unfriendly)
• How to combine words together (“Peg walked to the new store.” Not “Peg walk store new”)
• What word combinations are best in what situations (“Would you mind moving your foot?” could quickly change to “Get off my foot, please!” if the first request got no results.)

When a person cannot understand the language code, then there is a receptive problem. If a person does not know enough language rules to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings completely, then there is an expressive problem. One problem can exist without the other, but often they occur together in both children and adults.

The language code can be correct, but if the right body parts are not moved at the right time, then the message will not sound right. Children who stutter, and people whose voices sound rough, hoarse or nasal all have speech problems.

See also