accomplish, the deaf child of eight has not even begun. He cannot speak
a word; he does not even know that there is such a thing as a word. He
is eight years behind his hearing brother, and even if he starts now,
unless some means can be found for aiding him to overtake his brother
educationally, he will be only eight years old in education when he is
sixteen years of age. And when he is sixteen, the psychological period
will have passed for acquiring what he should have learned when he was
eight. The fact that the child is deaf does not exempt him from the
inexorable laws of mental psychology and heredity. In the development of
the human mind there is a certain period when all conditions are
favorable for the acquisition of speech and language. Unnumbered
generations of ancestors acquired speech and language at that stage of
their mental development, and this little deaf descendant's mind obeys
the law of inherited tendencies.

"If the speech and language-learning period, from two years of age to
ten, is allowed to pass unimproved, the task of learning them later is
rendered unnecessarily difficult.

"Therefore, in the case of the little deaf child, the years from two to
ten are crucial, and of far greater importance than the same period in
the case of the hearing child."

Even though the child be totally deaf from birth, he can nevertheless be
taught to speak and to understand when others speak to him. He can be
given the same education that he would be capable of mastering if he
could hear. The mother need not be despairing nor heart-broken. A
prompt, brave, and intelligent facing of the situation will result in
making the child one to be proud of and to lean upon.