“New Amsterdam” episode features deaf boy suffering from language deprivation
NBC’s medical drama “New Amsterdam,” which has a signing deaf surgeon, Dr. Wilder, portrayed by deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank, aired an episode last night that featured a five-year-old deaf boy who was suffering from language deprivation.
The episode is called “Give Me a Sign.” Frank posted on her Instagram that the boy’s name is Oliver Reilly and that he is a deaf actor. She also explained that the writer of the episode is a deaf person named Gisselle Legere.
You can watch the episode on NBC.com. I will recap it.
The deaf boy’s character is named Jael. His parents are sitting down with a doctor who is the head of psychiatry, Dr. Iggy Frome, who is portrayed by actor Tyler Labine.
The mother said Jael lost his hearing when he became sick at 12 months of age. The father explained that their pediatrician warned that if they taught Jael to sign, he would never learn to speak. The mother said his doctors said that sign language would limit him, that it would shrink his world to a small bubble of peers who could sign and isolate him. The parents said they were told to focus on speech therapy and motivating him to speak.
Dr. Frome asked, “Well, is it working?” “Can you hold a conversation with him?” He asked the parents how many words Jael is able to speak. The parents said, “78.”
Dr. Frome said the average two-year-old child knows about 150 words and that the behavior that Jael is showing is “consistent with language deprivation syndrome.” Dr. Frome explained that the “brain has a critical window in which it forms language, and if that window is missed, it can cause a whole range of issues.”
The parents asked why nobody had ever told them if this was true. Dr. Frome said, “unfortunately, medicine — our world — is still very much filtered through an able-bodied perspective.” Dr. Frome told the parents that they needed to make a decision to give Jael a language of his own.
Dr. Frome took the parents and Jael to an observation deck where they could view Dr. Wilder (Sandra Mae Frank’s character) doing an operation. He explained that Dr. Wilder is the chair of the entire oncology department and that she is deaf. He said, “sign language is a key that unlocked the world.” Dr. Wilder was doing an operation while signing in ASL with her staff as the boy looked on with inspiration.
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Dr. Frome then took the parents back to his office and recommended that they take Jael to a residential school with a high-quality deaf education and a bilingual approach. The parents asked where the school was, and Dr. Frome said it was in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was clearly a reference to the Learning Center for the Deaf.
The parents were hesitant because it was a four-hour drive from where they lived and out of state. The parents said he would be “lost.” Dr. Frome replied, “Well, he’s lost now. He’s on his own now.” The scene ended with Jael pointing to the school brochure and gesturing that he wanted to go.
That’s the end of the part with the deaf boy’s character. It was unique to see language deprivation be emphasized as a medical condition on a medical TV show. It was also unique that the show did not bring Dr. Wilder in to provide medical advice to Jael’s parents but only used her as an example that sign language can make a deaf person thrive.
Dr. Wilder’s character will continue to be on “New Amsterdam” in its fifth and final season. Last night’s episode had about 2.8 million viewers.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CkJ6259JgAk/
https://www.nbc.com/new-amsterdam/video/give-me-a-sign/9000173944