Deaf Children of Hearing Parents: Language and Culture

Introduction

Learning is hard enough for any child, but deaf children are unfortunately faced with an entirely different set of challenges that threatens their ability to find success in academia and in whatever professional endeavors they embark on. With many deaf children being born to hearing parents, there is a disconnect between caregiver and infant at a time when language acquisition and learning are at their highest point. This can result in limited linguistic structures that haunt children for the rest of their lives and impact how they perform in school and in the professional world. With the population of deaf children being so culturally vast, it has been difficult to design and implement strategies that effectively encourage early language development for infants with hearing impairment. This challenge shapes not only how these children learn to communicate, but also how they view themselves and their role within both deaf and hearing cultural contexts.

Description of the Population and Age Group

There are millions of children with various levels and degrees of hearing loss or impairment. Research shows that the majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents — in fact, an astounding 90% of all children born deaf have hearing parents (Standley, 2005). This makes the population of children born without hearing to hearing parents incredibly diverse.

Language acquisition and development begin very early in life. In order to best understand their role in facilitating cognitive development, a discussion of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development is necessary. Piaget's model presents a number of specified stages; the two most relevant here are the sensorimotor and pre-operational developmental stages. The sensorimotor stage begins at birth and lasts until about two years of age. It is during this period that the infant begins to recognize external objects and concepts, as well as how internal manipulation can produce desired results (Salkind, 2004). According to the research, "although the sensorimotor stage is the shortest of all stages, its contribution to human development is fundamental. It is in the course of this stage that the child truly becomes a thinking creature" (Anisfield, 1985, p. 20). Language becomes a key factor in how the child organizes new information constantly streaming in from the external world. The child begins to respond to and articulate language even during this earliest stage, and the foundations for language acquisition are built here before being refined in the next developmental period (Salkind, 2004).

The pre-operational stage lasts from approximately two to seven years of age. This is the stage where language is most important, as it becomes a tool for the child to make sense of the external world and to reach out to other individuals in meaningful ways. However, if the foundations were not properly built during the sensorimotor stage, language acquisition becomes considerably harder during this developmental period.

For most deaf children born to hearing parents, the transmission of deaf culture — including the use of sign language — does not automatically occur. This is often because communication accessible to deaf children is not established during the critical sensorimotor stage. Deaf children typically gain access to deaf culture and language through schooling or contact with other deaf individuals, which occurs much later, after the sensorimotor stage has already passed. Research suggests that "significantly, most deaf children not only start learning language later than their peers who share a common language with their parents, but are confronted with less consistent language models when they do start" (Marschuck, 2001, p. 6). This is a serious problem that threatens to limit deaf children's ability to learn with similar success rates as their hearing counterparts.

Relevant Multicultural Issues

Due to the vast array of cultural contexts present within the deaf population, implementation of early sign language learning is difficult. There are significant problems with bilingual models of sign language instruction. American Sign Language (ASL) is typically taught in conjunction with English, and thus does not translate well into families whose native language is not English. This further complicates the child's language learning, as parents are unable to support at home what is being taught in external school settings (Marschuck, 2001). As one study notes, "deaf children come from culturally diverse families and the home language may also be another minority language that the child is trying to acquire orally" (Standley, 2005, p. 2180).

Socioeconomic status plays a crucial role in determining a child's access to resources. Specialized schools and ASL training are expensive. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are often at a far greater disadvantage compared to deaf children in more affluent families. Families in small or rural communities may also need to relocate to access appropriate schools and speech therapy facilities, which requires considerable financial investment. Parents with college educations who are employed full-time tend to have children with better academic performance on reading and nonverbal IQ measures (Mayberry, 2002). As a result, "socioeconomic status predicts a deaf child's reading achievement" (Mayberry, 2002, p. 75). Many white children born deaf are exposed to greater external resources that support language acquisition, while African-American and Hispanic children often show lower average reading scores (Mayberry, 2002). It is troubling that "socioeconomic status may have a greater impact on the academic attainment of deaf children than that of hearing children" (Mayberry, 2002, p. 75).

There are also emotional barriers. Many hearing parents struggle to accept their child's deaf status and may attempt to attribute blame to themselves or to each other regarding the cause of the child's deafness. This reaction appears relatively consistent across racial and ethnic groups and further complicates the child's early exposure to language and social developmental processes. Advances in technology have introduced another dimension: the cochlear implant, an electronic device implanted into the inner ear to help facilitate hearing despite the absence of functional hair cells in the cochlea (Spencer & Marschuck, 2006). However, the benefits of cochlear implants are largely concentrated within more affluent communities, as the high costs of surgery and the device itself create significant barriers for families in lower socioeconomic classes. Children who receive cochlear implants face a rapid, compressed period of language development that they must work to keep pace with, and they often experience distinct challenges in current educational programs — navigating issues that affect both the hearing and non-hearing communities (Spencer & Marschuck, 2006).