Impact of Deafness on Children

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Deafness can occur at birth or become evident later in a person’s life. Deafness is a disability where a person cannot hear anything through their ear canal. Deafness is incorporated importantly with children because if a child has this disability as a younger age than it attributes greatly to how a child can develop with this disability. Some scientists say that deafness can be lead to genetics while others say that trauma events or exposure to loud noise also have a key role to the cause.

Deafness as first is assessed by either at birth or can become acquired as stated earlier. Acquired deafness can be damaged to the ear canal through noise or it can be a delayed onset genetic issue (medicine net). Deafness acquired at birth can be associated to a genetic disease called Waardenburg syndrome. “Waardenburg syndrome constitutes a group of genetic disorders that involve pigmentary changes, such as different colored eyes or streaks of hair” (Cleve 114). Most of the hearing loss presented at birth is contributed with being inherited with it. The deafness presented at birth may be caused by a condition or infection that the mother was exposed to at pregnancy.

The behavior or characteristics that you may see with a child of this disability is first and foremost the child not being able to hear. This characteristic alone contributes to everything that a deaf child does because a child must communicate somehow with people. A behavior that a child may learn would be sign language. Sign language is a branch of communication caused through parenting that serves cognitive, linguistic, and social functions (Marschark 23). Other characteristics of children with deafness can be that they have tried to use hearing aids or have done some sort ...

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...aling with it as a part of your life. Children usually born with deafness are attributed with this severe form of hearing loss. Other ways to deal with deafness can be treated orally by surgical procedures or medications to help treat the disability. More than likely the use of a hearing aid can be used to treat deafness if that person does not have a severe kind of this disability. A hearing aid can be used to hear people in that it is a kind of an assisted audio learning device.

Works Cited
Hearing Loss Web. Web. 14 Nov. 14. .

Marschark, Marc. Psychological Development of Deaf Children. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.

Medicinenet.com. Medicinenet Inc. 4 Nov. 2009. .

Van Cleve, John. Genetics, Disability, and Deafness. Washington D.C.: Gaullaudet UP, 2002.

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