Early Language Access: Setting the Foundation

If you're raising a deaf or hard of hearing child*, one of the biggest decisions in front of you is how to make sure your child has full access to language. Signed languages and spoken languages are all highly structured systems of words and grammar that are important for child development. It doesn't matter if a child is learning English, Farsi, French, or ASL; they are equally good at supporting development. The critical thing is whether a child is exposed to language and whether they can access it. Deaf children are often in environments where lots of language is being used, but they can't hear the language around them, which can negatively impact development.

Access to language is important across the lifespan so that people of all ages can fully participate in their communities, but it is especially important during early childhood.

During these early years, children’s brains are incredibly flexible and primed to absorb language. If children have full access to a language—whether spoken or signed—they will generally learn those languages without any explicit instruction.

What children need isn’t about hearing, it is about a fully accessible language, whether signed or spoken.

What Happens When Language Access is Limited or Delayed?

When a child doesn’t have full access to language in those critical early years, it can lead affect their development. Language is important for parts of development, from social connections to brain development and cognition. Delayed language access can be traumatic, and can lead to challenges with all sorts of things from memory, to brain development, to socio-emotional learning. The effects can be long lasting, and we don't have great evidence about how to reverse them

The Importance of Early Access to Sign Language

Introducing sign language early on—right from birth, if possible—gives deaf and hard of hearing children a clear, reliable way to express themselves and understand the world around them. Sign language doesn’t interfere with speech development; in fact, research shows that using sign language can help boost overall language skills, whether the child also learns to speak or not.

When a child has access to sign language, they can start building strong cognitive and social foundations, even if their spoken language skills develop more slowly or are supplemented by technology. By giving children full access to language through signing, you ensure that they don’t miss out on critical learning opportunities during their early years.

Do you have to choose between signed and spoken language?

When deaf children of hearing parents get access to ASL early, their language develops on schedule. In our study of 78 deaf children of hearing parents, those exposed to ASL by six months showed vocabulary growth that matched deaf children of deaf, signing parents even though their hearing parents were still learning to sign. A follow-up study found that there was no relationshp between parent sign language skills and toddlers early vocabulary knowledge, though parent sign language skills became more important as children grew.

*We use the terms "deaf" and "hard of hearing" instead of terms like "hearing impaired," "hearing loss," "hearing difference," or "cochlear implant user" because those terms define children as though something is missing or broken, and they focus on hearing rather than the whole child. We like that "deaf" and "hard of hearing" describe people as whole people who have full lives.