Deaf-Blind Infants and Children: A Developmental Guide

Margaret E. Kidd is a member of Toronto’s Child & Family Services
Review Board.

This book is an invaluable guide for anyone living or working with handicapped children. One is impressed with the sensitive detailed suggestions for guiding the child’s optimum development. Careful integration of theory and practice is presented in such a way that the reader is challenged to concentrate on the child’s strengths and to start “where the child is,” ferreting out those strengths. Their references to the non-handicapped child emphasize their thesis that the handicapped child shares many areas of normal development which should be utilized and maximized. Possibilities of developing motor, social-emotional, perceptual communicative, and cognitive abilities are set out in practical terms. The authors’ appreciation of child development is impressive.

Their approach is “co-active, co-operative and reactive.” They suggest a one-to-one interaction, which includes the teaching of life skills. They demonstrate the benefits of time spent helping the child do things for himself, including the process of helping that child know what he has accomplished.

It is also shown that “the environment must be structured to meet the needs and level of functioning of the child rather than the child being forced to conform to the demands of a hostile environment.”

We are pushed to think of the smells of different rooms, people, or areas as cues for the deaf-blind child, or the feel of a towel to anticipate a swim — in place of spoken language or visual image.

McInnes and Treffry, on the staff of the W. Ross Macdonald School in Brantford, previously known as the Brantford School for the Blind, have amassed a gold mine of information. It is well organized and indexed with a useful glossary of terms.

Their book should lead to more effective treatment for many children. It will be useful for both parents and professionals. They encourage parents to continue efforts through their pointing out that parents’ observations are often uniquely useful in identifying cues of behavior not often obvious to the professional.