Guest guest Posted December 19, 2001 Report Share Posted December 19, 2001 In a message dated 12/17/01 12:22:57 PM US Mountain Standard Time, janeric@... writes: << Now, since doctoring at the Mayo, they say she can hear fine out of her right ear, and not to worry about ASL. >> Jane: ASL is a great tool for any child. My grandson, besides having bilateral microtia, atresia, and hypotonia also has oral and verbal apraxia and motor planning issues. We have only just started signing with him and we are learning as we go along. From all that I have read, the same cognitive skills needed for signing are needed for language; however, gross motor skills develop faster than verbal language and the signing supplies a means of communication until the language catches up with the gross motor skills. When a child is able to verbalize quicker than he can sign, he slowly drops the signing as his chief means of communication. In my grandsons case it will be a long time before he has intelligible speech (he's 23 months old and doesn't have any words; also he can only make vowel sounds - no consonent sounds as yet) so the signing is crucial. His speech problems did not become apparant to us until he was around 15 - 18 months old. Until that time we just thought he was a late talker. My advice, for whatever it's worth is keep up the signing; It can't hurt and it may just help tons. Lora __________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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