The Role of Parents in the Language Development of Children with Hearing Impairment

Language immersion from birth is crucial to a child’s language development. Children with hearing impairment experience great difficulty in the acquisition and use of the spoken language. The majority of children with hearing impairment, mostly born to hearing parents, struggle to develop sign language because it is not the language of the home. They usually end up developing the home sign for survival. Social interaction, as well as the development of moral and social values, get affected. Hearing children acquire the language of the home from the environment because their utterances are continuously reinforced. The child with hearing impairment fails to acquire language because he or she cannot hear. Those born to non- hearing parents acquire sign language from their environments with ease for it is the language of the home. However, they struggle or find it impossible to develop the spoken language. It becomes apparent that parents must play a pivotal role in the child’s language development, be it sign or spoken, since it is necessary for the acquisition of knowledge, social interactions and day to day communication.