User:Adeledaniels5/Language deprivation in children with hearing loss

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Language deprivation in children with hearing loss occurs when children do not receive accessible language exposure during the critical period of language development. Language development may be severely delayed from the lack of language exposure during this period. This happens to a lot of deaf children because they did not receive any form of language from their parents. Children who are deaf are highly recommended to learn sign language for the fullest access to them. Therefore, hearing parents are encouraged to learn sign language for their deaf kids to prevent language deprivation.

Language deprivation in deaf and hard-of-hearing children often occurs when sufficient exposure to any language, spoken or signed, is not provided in the first few years of life. It is very common for parents to get misinformation from professional workers about how to give deaf kids language inputs. Early intervention, parental involvement, and resources all work to prevent language deprivation. Children who experience limited access to language—spoken or signed—may not develop the necessary skills to successfully assimilate into the academic learning milieu. There are various educational approaches for teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. There are so many useful resources and methods to prevent language deprivation in deaf children.

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Code Switching:

By prioritizing the child's visual and auditory language equally from birth, children are given every opportunity and tool to develop language. As children grow and become adults, they may naturally prefer one modality over the other, but will have developed useful skills in both. Code switching allows bilingual individuals to experience all the benefits of each language they know. For deaf and hard of hearing children especially, a strong language foundation in a signed language paired with a spoken language (or written) sets the stage for literacy later on. Deaf children may lack proficiency or fluency in either language during early language-learning development, they still engage in codeswitching activities, in which they go back and forth between signing and English to communicate.

Conflict and controversies:

There has been much conflict and controversy regarding language modality for deaf and hard of hearing children. This is due in part to the identification system. When it is discovered that a child is deaf or hard of hearing, this assessment is usually made via a "failed" hearing test in a medical setting. The first people the parents interact with after their child's hearing status is identified can be very influential. These professionals need to provide parents with unbiased, well-rounded information to help guide decisions they will need to make. In the past, many children have suffered due to pressure their parents experienced to choose one language modality for them as soon as possible. Furthermore, systemic bias towards deafness, known as audism, and business motivation commonly impacts what information and guidance parents receive. By the time parents realize the communication modality they chose wasn't successful for their child, their child is already behind in language development and might experience effects of language deprivation.

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children:

At a young age, most children naturally learn their native language. "Although spoken language is ubiquitous for children who hear normally, congenitally deaf children do not have access to it from birth. Approximately 10% of the deaf children are born into deaf families who use sign language as their main communication method. Sign languages are natural languages with linguistic features similar to spoken languages (Stokoe, 1978; Klima and Bellugi, 1979), and the developmental milestones for sign language are similar to those of spoken languages (Reilly et al., 1990; Anderson and Reilly, 2002; Pichler, 2002; Mayberry and Squires, 2006). "Deaf children with deaf parents who sign with them thus experience language from birth, like typically developing children with normal hearing."  To succeed, Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children must acquire at least one language (spoken or signed). This purpose is reinforced by providing access to a native sign language. Many researchers and practitioners encourage families to focus exclusively on spoken language, despite evidence that natural sign languages are beneficial to DHH children.