Authors: Glasner AT*
Research indicates that approximately 90% of pre-lingual deaf children are born to hearing parents. Further, according to the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS), about 3.6% of the U.S. population, or about 11 million individuals, consider themselves deaf or have serious difficulty hearing. For many of those children born to hearing parents, they are not learning or acquiring language from their parents as their parents do not know or use sign language. Often times, these parents have been advised (mistakenly) to not learn and use sign language with their children because of the belief that signing prevents speech and mainstream inclusion. This lack of language skills can have a deleterious effect on deaf children and lead to “an impoverished or distorted relationship between parent and child. This can lead to challenging behavior in adulthood. This paper will explore the nexus between language deprivation/delayed language development and the subsequent risk factors associated with criminal behavior.
Keywords: Language Acquisition; Language Deprivation/Delayed Language; Criminal Behavior
