If you do not understand the boy, or he does not understand you, do not let him resort to gestures, nor use them yourself.  Give him pencil and paper, if necessary.  It will not be necessary often or long, and each day occasions of difficulty will grow fewer.

Provide some useful and helpful occupation for the child for at least a part of each day.  Do not let him play at random all the time.  Continue a certain regularity of life in the matter of meals and getting up and going to bed.  Insist upon respectful behavior and good manners.  He has these demanded of him at school.  Do not let him return in the fall having lost much that he had gained during the preceding year.

When he is at home keep him in touch with the activities and the topics of discussion in the family circle.  Do not let him withdraw or feel shut out.  This will take a good deal of effort and self-denial and patience, but in the long run it will repay the parents.  Failure to do this will eventually bring sorrow to all concerned.  Train the other children to do their share of this.  Insist upon their telling the deaf one their plans and their doings.  Unless some care is taken he will see the others going without knowing where or why, he will sometimes lose pleasures because he did not hear the talk that was going on around him and no one thought to tell him.  This has a tendency to make him bitter and unsocial.

From the very beginning of spoken intercourse with the deaf child the greatest care should be taken to speak NATURALLY to him.  Avoid entirely all exaggeration of lip movement and mouth opening.  Speak a little slowly, perhaps, and always distinctly, but never with facial contortions and waving hands.  The aim of his oral training is to enable him to understand the ordinary speech of people when they speak to him, and to do this he requires an immense amount of practice, just as the hearing child requires a great deal of practice for years before he can understand what people are saying to him.  If you speak to him in a different way from that employed when speaking to others he will learn to understand that, but not your ordinary manner of speaking.  He will also imitate it himself.  The Chinaman speaks and understands only “Pidgin” English because only “Pidgin” English has been used in communicating with him.  If people had spoken to the Chinaman as they do to other people he would have gradually acquired good English.

So it is with the deaf child.  If you want him to gradually learn to understand the ordinary intercourse of life, you must exercise him in it for years.  You must not expect him to get much at first, any more than you expect the baby to understand to start with.  But each month he will gain more, and by the time he is sixteen or seventeen he will have very nearly overtaken his hearing brother.  But if you always address him with a yawning mouth and flopping tongue and lips, and use deaf-mute English to him, he will progress in his understanding and use of that, but it is not what you wish him to acquire.  Be patient, be gentle, be untiring and unremitting in your efforts, but BE NATURAL. Keep your eyes on his eyes and speak only when his gaze is upon your face.