“Decreased auditory sensitivity manifested early in life can adversely affect the development of language, oral communication, cognition and education progress.”- Sininger, Grimes and Christensen (2010)
Hearing is very important for the development of speech and language, communication and learning. Children that have a hearing loss have difficulties communicating and also speech and language problems i.e. that are unable to use spoken language.
When a child is born with a hearing impairment the development of these skills is delayed. This will then affect communicative, academic and social success.
A hearing loss interferes with the child’s ability to detect and recognise spoken language.
The development of the auditory skills that are important
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It allows families of children with hearing impairment to gather information so that they can make informed and best decisions for the child’s language and communication (Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, 2007). Delayed diagnosis of hearing loss leads to delayed provision of intervention which results to the child’s language and cognitive development being delayed. Early communication intervention takes different forms such as fitting of hearing aids, cochlear implants, counselling and teaching of parents as to how they can help with speech and language stimulation in their child.
Early communication intervention helps parents of hard of hearing children to have an understanding of what their child has been diagnosed with.
According to the Boys Town National Research Hospital, there are two main goals of early communication intervention. The first goal is to help the child with hearing loss learn to communicate and interact socially. The second goal is to help the child participate fully in the family.
Infants that are hard of hearing need to be enrolled in an appropriate early intervention programme by the age of 6 months so that they can catch up with hearing peers of the same