Nr 17.  2007 sid. 136–146

  Catch and Connection
From silence to meaning in the classroom
for a child with partial hearing loss

Ann Marie Sacramone

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Ann Marie Sacramone, Master of Science in Education och psykoanalytiker samt ”special educator”. Hon arbetar i privat praktik på Manhattan, New York. I artikeln berättar hon om hur leken använts i det psykoterapeutiska arbetet med ett barn med partiell hörselskada och gravt försenad språkutveckling. Barnets föräldrar har givit sitt godkännande till publicering.

“Why do infants, indeed all people, so strongly seek states of interpersonal connectedness, and why does the failure to achieve connectedness wreak such damage on their mental and physical health? The contrast between the subjective ex-periences of connect and disconnect is vivid. When connection is made with another person, there is an experience of growth and exuberance, a sense of continuity, and a feeling of being in sync along with a sense of knowing the other’s sense of the world. With disconnection there is an experience of shrinking, a loss of continuity, a senselessness of the other. Feeling disconnected is painful, and in the extreme there may be terrifying feelings of annihilation.” (Tronik, 2007)

This article describes relationship based special education work in a classroom with a four-year-old child who had partial hearing loss and a severe language delay. This child’s inability to use language limited her ability to understand, share and elaborate her experience in the world, leading to a kind of isolation and risk for emotional difficulties. Through a relationship that was at first non-verbal and a later use of books and play created on the basis of the child’s experiences (first of anger), the child rapidly began to acquire verbal language. Following this, the language of time and location began to be mastered in the context of relationships, particularly those involving separations.

In working with children in classrooms who have been as-signed special education services, I have found it useful to practice teaching as a process of emotional development that unfolds within relationships in the classroom (Sacramone, 2006). That there is a link between social, emotional and academic education is well documented (Cohen, 2006, Elias, 2006). In my work with a four year old child with a severe language delay, I found that reaching the goals of her Individualized Education Plan (IEP) grew out of her social-emotional development in her preschool classroom. I feel that the beginning of my work with this child was as much the beginning of a therapeutic process as an educational one. By describing it in detail I feel that I am describing one process in which this child was able to move into a more elaborated interpersonal relatedness as well as master the goals of her educational plan.

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2011-10-29

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