socialisation / inclusion

[Guest guest]

It is my theory (yes another one) that social skills are hindered, in

our children because of not achieving physical milestones until much

later than other children. They never experienced that peer toddler

interaction, then the little friendships that start to develop around 3.

Experiences that start a child learning social skills. At 3, if your

lucky our children are beginning to walk. And that achievement in itself

will take years to master , so again they never have the experience of

keeping up with other children. And the list could go on. So when it

reaches the time that everything has settled down and social skills with

peers can be addressed they don't have the experience behind them to

tackle the challenge. As some one mentioned about their son, they will

usually attach themselves to an adult. Why not, adults of of all

descriptions have attended them all their lives. This probably also has

a reverse affect on some kids.

What I have done with Talisa, is to invite kids to the house, so

that at least she is on familiar ground.

I also had an older Deaf girl 13 that was on the same taxi home from

school, come here one day a week, to play games ect. That wasn't so

successful because she developed a crush for the boy next door (who

practically lives here).

I have been toying with the idea of once a week having a Deaf

child, around the age of 3 over for Talisa to interact with, because

Talisa is heavily into the mothering role. She would be giving this

child language, and in return I hope that through this child Talisa will

learn some socializing skills that she missed out on, but hopefully take

her interactions a step further, in that she is the older child and

show some assertiveness, (something she has no trouble showing Warwick,

myself or Alessi).

We have been really lucky in the area of friendships for Talisa. 2

other parents that live in neighboring suburbs had Deaf daughters one

the same age as Talisa and the other a year younger . We all met at the

early intervention center. One family we have become very good friends

with.

Talisa's social skills one on one are good. If there are 3 she can

just keep up, but bigger groups she finds it difficult . The fact that

her class has only 6 children in it, is wonderful really, but it still

remains a challenge for her. I now that for Talisa integration /

inclusion would not work . There would be too much stimulus. Recently

they renovated the junior school and 3 classes and their teachers shared

an area, a team teaching approach. I went in for the day to check it

out. Chaos! there is no way you can get 18 Deaf kids to look at you when

you want to say something and that doesn't matter whether they have

additional disabilities or not.

Again we are lucky that we live in Melbourne which has the only

Deaf public school in Australia. She is the only kid in her class that

has other problems, and her teacher for the past three years has been

Kathy and she herself is Deaf. So Talisa is getting a full language

exposure at school.

We have been involved with Deaf early intervention center, that when

we started we were the first hearing parents to choose Auslan,

(remembering that Talisa was born in 89 the same year that the Auslan

dictionary was published, so this was a 'new thing' ). When we left

there they had a Deaf person employed on staff. Then we went onto the

pre-school that was a nightmare. They had nothing and fought us every

step of the way. To the point that they asked us to remove Talisa from

the school because we complained to much. When we left in 3 years we had

a full time program wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

But now they have 6 Deaf people employed on staff.

And now at V.C. D. I am on school council and it is a very exciting

time because the principal applied for and got a promotion. There were

no successful applicants within , so we can advertise world

wide. If we could just get a Deaf principal the changes that would

eventuate from that would wonderful.

Integration, specialized school. We may have a choice, we may not,

due to location. No one is perfect.

The most important thing is that the child enjoys their school day.

Jackie, Warwick Talisa 9 charge Alessi 6

Melbourne Australia.