Principles of rehabilitation for hearing impaired children

Insist on early detection, early diagnosis and early intervention

The rehabilitation of hearing-impaired children involves hearing compensation (reconstruction), hearing speech training, speech correction, language education, preschool education and many other aspects. We must adhere to the combination of medical education and comprehensive intervention. An interdisciplinary team composed of audiologists, auditory speech rehabilitation teachers, speech pathologists, preschool teachers, etc. participated in and coordinated the implementation.

Adhere to the law of children’s development

The ultimate goal of rehabilitation is to promote the equal and comprehensive participation of disabled people in social life. In order to achieve this goal, we need to overcome the dysfunction, the physical and social environment obstacles, and the overall improvement of the quality of the disabled. Similarly, hearing-impaired children should receive equal education as healthy hearing children. Besides good listening and speaking ability, they must also have healthy body and mind as well as comprehensive knowledge and ability to participate in social life in an all-round way. Only with all-round development and the ability to participate and compete in an all-round way can deaf children finally achieve the goal of rehabilitation.

Insist on the leading role of parents

Parents are children’s first teachers and lifelong teachers. Parents play an irreplaceable role in the rehabilitation of hearing-impaired children. Parents and children have inborn blood and emotional ties. Family education has strong infectivity and permeability. Family environment and parents’ communication mode have an important impact on the speech and language development of hearing-impaired children. According to Hart and Risley’s research, parents’ speech style and speech richness determine children’s language development level. According to the survey, they found that parents can speak 2100 words per hour to their children in professional families, 1200 words per hour in working families, and only 600 words per hour in families requiring social welfare. In families with poor economic and social conditions, parents not only have a small amount of discourse, but also have a low quality of discourse. They seldom modify and ask questions in conversation, and often neglect their children’s desire for communication.

Based on the above basic principles, we can see that the rehabilitation of hearing-impaired children is a rescue project that emphasizes “early”, and a system project that emphasizes the comprehensive application of multi-disciplinary and multi-technical. Hearing impaired children are children first, with the physical and mental characteristics of general children and their own special needs. Under the guidance of scientific outlook on children, education and rehabilitation, we must adhere to the principle of taking children as the basis, respect the physical and mental characteristics and development rules of children, comprehensively use various intervention means, and integrate and promote the development of listening and speaking ability and overall quality of hearing-impaired children.