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 before five years of age. If she has the patience and the time to follow the directions given, she will have done her child a very great service; the greatest that lies within her power; and she will have laid the foundation for a more rapid and better development of speech than would have been possible without her preliminary training. Not every mother will find it possible to carry out all the suggestions offered in this little book, but no one should feel discouraged on that account. It seemed best to offer too many suggestions rather than too few, because these pages may fall into the hands of some mothers whose situation is such that full advantage can be taken of every idea here given. Presence of too much matter in the little book will not destroy its usefulness in cases where only a portion can be applied, whereas the lack of some of the ideas might limit its value in certain instances. No one should give up in despair just because it is not possible to do all that is here suggested. Something, at least, can be found here which it is possible to do that will help very much. Sometimes, through a false sense of shame, or through ignorance of the possibilities open to a deaf child, mothers have refused to admit that their children were deaf, or to allow anything to be done for them, until very valuable time has been lost. This is unfair to the child, and very wrong. A mother should have only pity for the deaf child and eagerness to aid him to overcome his handicap so far as possible. Delay in frankly facing the facts and in taking all possible measures to develop the remaining faculties will in the end only increase the mother's shame and add to it the pangs of remorse. In a little book written to guide physicians in advising parents of deaf children, I said: