_rarely_ an untrained person who can
_safely_ meddle with articulation.

"Tell them that it is not true that all deaf children are bad; that
the deaf must learn obedience as others do.

"Tell them the many things which you wish your pupils had learned
before they entered school.

"Only this I beg of you--tell them!
"LUCILE M. MOORE."

For the sake of presenting the ideas contained in this little book in a
somewhat systematic manner it was best to arrange them on the
supposition that they would come to the notice of the mothers while
their children were yet less than two years of age. In many cases,
however, this will not be the case. When, therefore, the child is three,
four, or five years old when this falls into the hands of the mother, it
would still be well if she carried out the suggestions in the order in
which they are here arranged. With the maturity of mind and body that
comes with the added years, the child can pass through the earlier
stages of the training much more rapidly than can be the case with the
baby. Nevertheless, the preliminary steps should not be omitted. A child
of four can be carried in six months through the exercises that occupied
two years when begun with the child of twelve months, but the older
child should not be started with exercises suggested for the years after
two.

Mothers of deaf children cannot be expected to be trained teachers of
the deaf. It would be useless, and, in fact, often unfortunate, to ask
them to attempt to teach articulation to their children. Even for them
to teach the children to write would usually be undesirable because the
greatest gain from the mother's efforts comes from the early
establishment of the speech-reading habit and _entire_ dependence upon
it. It is a very great help to have this habit fixed before writing is
taught. There is no haste about the child's learning to write. That is
easily and quickly accomplished when the proper time comes. The
difficult thing to do is, very fortunately, the thing the mother is best
fitted to accomplish, namely, to create in the child the ability to
interpret speech by means of the eye, and the habit of expecting to get
ideas by watching the face of a speaker.

With these ideas in mind there has been careful avoidance in this
little book of any suggestion that the mother should be anxious about
the speech development of the child befo