Children who are deaf or hard of hearing may experience language deprivation in the early years that impacts long-term communication and educational outcomes. Fortunately, family engagement in the early childhood years has been shown to increase outcomes for young learners, and the standards for early childhood family engagement align with best practices for teaching children who are deaf or hard of hearing from multilingual families. Best practices for early childhood education, deaf or hard of hearing education, and multilingual education all place the family at the forefront with a strong belief that family is the first and best teacher for their child. The purpose of the chapter is to present the alignment of family centered practices across early childhood, deaf or hard of hearing, and multilingual education literature and present family centered collaboration strategies to increase early childhood language access for young multilingual children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
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Juan is a five-year old boy who recently moved to the USA from Puerto Rico. His family relocated in pursuit of better intervention services for Juan who is deaf and presents with communication delays. Upon arrival in the US, his family sought intervention help for their son, enrolling him in a day treatment program that includes preschool, speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy. However, after 6 months in the program, Juan is making little progress in his ability to communicate, is limited in his interactions with peers and adults and does not engage with the learning activities or participate in play appropriately. With kindergarten rapidly approaching, his parents are very concerned and wonder how he will manage with these extreme delays in his development, when he communicates only through gestures, pointing and the use of some physical aggression.
The first few years, even the first few months, of life is a critical period of brain development when a child learns rapidly and the brain makes neural connections that are foundational for all areas of development and specifically importantly in language development (CDC, 2020). The bidirectional interactions between caregivers and infants are part of the complex process of early language development best supported by responsive adult-infant exchanges in language rich environments that are accessible to the child (McCollum, 2015). Children with hearing are exposed to language via these rich exchanges between the infants and the parents or caregivers as they hear and connect sound with meaning, which then develops into language and supports the child’s overall development. Early visual language emerges in much the same way when a deaf child is born to signing parents and child-adult interactions support visual language development. No matter the linguistic input, language is built through environments filled with responsive caregivers who interact with the infant in ways that provide exposure and access to fluent language opportunities (McCollum, 2015; Zero to three, 2021; Joint Commission for Infant Hearing, 2019). When a child is born deaf or hard of hearing (DHH), this critical period for language development can be impeded however when the infant cannot fully engage due to a lack of access to the linguistic information. Intervention services during this period can make a tremendous impact by supporting families with the information and the resources they need to learn how to intervene in their child’s development and ameliorate the language delays that can result from this lack of language exposure. In the US and territories, intervention services for children with a diagnosed condition can receive services and supports under Part C of the Individual Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 for infants and toddlers through the age of 2, and Section 619 of Part B for preschool children from age 3 until they enter kindergarten. (Joint Commission for Infant Hearing, 2007; Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center, n.d.) However, the referral and intake process required to access these services, developed by each state’s lead agency, can be complex and overwhelming for families (Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, 2013; Bowen, 2016, Ward et.al. 2019). Families face various models of intervention between the medical model they initially face when the child is diagnosed to the social educational model foundational to IDEA services. Within each of these systems there is a disparity of the specialized expertise needed to provide the best and most appropriate intervention for the DHH child, and the professionals often have various opinions about what quality intervention involves. Services for young children and their families are often siloed and lack coordination, even though recommended practices across early childhood, for children with disabilities or who are at risk for disabilities, and multilingual children and families all recognized the importance of a multidisciplinary team that partners with parents or the primary caregivers.