hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS
"What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"

Memory Books for Language

We used the second copies of all the pictures for Reid's memory book. The memory book is a very important piece of language building bring back the events of yesterday, or last week to immediate display. Parents without camera's can use a pencil to create stick drawings of "what happened today". Some memory books have turned out to be museum quality collections of art.

Our auditory/verbal teacher gave us instructions to use a note book, and just small drawings. Using the camera meant a delay for processing, so memory had to be used in the immediacy, until the pictures came back. Now we have digital cameras, and video cameras in many houses, and the build up of the memory books is easier, while still one more thing we have to do, and should do for every child, but it is vitally important for the hard of hearing child.

Reid's memory book was in a shoe box, without labels on the pictures. He can look at a picture, and talk for five or ten minutes about the "who,what,where,when,why."  The pictures still, at age seventeen, generate this much speech.

Reid started using my camera to take pictures too, and has contributed many to his memory book. He has an excellent eye, and is adding beauty to our world. 

I have about 10 feet of photo albums, and put the years on the spines this summer. When looking at old family pictures, few are identified. If you have pictures like this, take them with you this Thanksgiving, and get the older family members to identify "who, what, where, when, why." Then you can make a family album for the next generation. This might be an excellent project for the hard of hearing child to undertake, (probably with much pushing from you) particularly as it will put the child together with adults who may otherwise ignore the child. Identifying and looking at the pictures often brings amazing memories back to our elders, giving them an important place in the gathering.

For my Grandparents, photography was a rare thing, a special event to mark weddings, degrees, and accomplishments. My father took many pictures over his lifetime, usually of places he went, and sometimes the people he went with. My children were born into a house with a 35 mm camera kept loaded with prepaid film all the time. I have captured most of their lives as it flew by.  I am not prepared to look at the pictures of the children often because it creates ghosts in the house, but the scope of their childhood on film is amazing.

How to look better in the family pictures

If you take along a video camera and shoot casually at a family gathering, you may get lovely footage of who has special relationships within the family. At a friend's wedding, I kept the video camera going through many posings and regrouping for family pictures. This was a family which had been devasted by suicide of the young father, and after raising the children by herself, my friend was advised by her teenaged kids to get a life, so she advertised in the papers, found a man, and married him. At the wedding was her first husband's entire family, much older than I remembered them, functioning as great- grandparents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins. To complicate matters the groom brought his first wife, and first family, as well as a few friends. My daughter sang "The Love Song" while his son from the first marriage, played the guitar. Spontaneously during the song, the groom's daughter stood up and danced in the sunlight of the window hold her week old baby. Yes, I caught this magic moment on video, probably the most beautiful thing I have filmed.

Over the years, I have always wondered how some people manage to be in a group having a picture done, and get portrayed as well-put together while others are just in the picture. Here's the secret, captured on video. Instead of wasting time groaning about being in a picture, which my kids do, seconds are spent applying a lipstick to already well-done make-up. The elements of clothing which should hang from the shoulder are pulled to hang properly. Decorative elements such as a flower are given a final primping, and the person moves willingly to stand next to the person in the family, posing just enough to accentuate the good points. They may greet and kiss, the makeup is perfect, and the face is perfect, and they look terrific in a group of quite nice looking people. After the picture, the family greets and kisses again. The love between one family member and another is evident in the hugs, after the picture.

PAM Candlish Nov 2001

-PAM 10 Nov 2001