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One of several email listservs that I belong to discuss how best to assist children who are hard of hearing or deaf. A listserv member recently asked a question about developing an Individualized Educational Plan (“IEP”) for hard of hearing and deaf children entering kindergarten. A discussion ensued regarding appropriate services and IEP goals that might be incorporated in the IEP.

Since I was born profoundly hearing impaired and am a practicing special education attorney, I offered some general thoughts based on my own personal and professional experience. I would like to share some of these thoughts in this blog post.

In developing an IEP for the upcoming kindergarten school year, it is important to break things down in smaller components:

1. What do you want your kids to learn?
2. What teaching methods do you want the teachers to adopt?
3. What accommodations or modifications do your kids need in order to do well in school?

If you want your kids to learn sign language, whether it’s SEE (Signed Exact English) or ASL (American Sign Language), you have got to talk about that with the IEP team. If you want the teachers to use an FM system or use both visual and audio cues, talk about it. If your kids need an interpreter or need to sit in a particular location for effective lipreading, talk about it.

If your kids cannot hear music, or can hear music but not understand the words, what is the best way to deal with that? If your kids are lipreaders, you want to make sure that the teacher isn’t covering her mouth when reading a story from a book. Similarly, if your kids are lipreaders, how will the teacher/school deal with puppet shows or movies without captioning?

If you want your kids to speak, you need to discuss speech therapy services for the upcoming school year as well. When thinking about speech therapy services, you need to think about how many hours of services your child should receive each week in order for this service to be effective.

It’s probably not too early to think about whether a FM system might be helpful at this stage. Discuss it with the audiologist and speech pathologist.

Social issues should be addressed, but I think kindergarteners tend to be quite social and get along with other kids with disabilities. As kids get older, friendships become more challenging, especially when you move to a different school district where kids haven’t been exposed to children with disabilities.

As HOH/deaf children graduate from kindergarten to elementary school, the IEP becomes more complex because language is increasing exponentially and the IEP team need to discuss more sophisticated technologies, such as cued speech interpreters and Computer Assisted Real Time Captioning (CART).

There are some excellent IEP/special education resources for parents who have hard of hearing and deaf children. One of these resources can be found at Help Kids Hear – Advocacy for Your Hearing Impaired Child.

Related posts:

1. Are IEPs Necessary for Service Animals?
2. Deaf People are not Deaf to Justice