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Speaking Deaf Babies.

What happens if a child is diagnosed late (after 3 years)?

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The first three years of life is very critical for a person to develop speech and language skills. The brain is still developing and figuring out how to make sense of the sounds heard by the baby. During this critical phase, the brain is able to easily learn language. If the baby is repeatedly exposed to sounds and the language spoken by the people around, during this period, the baby starts learning how to speak in the same language

By the age of 3 years, the brain is 80% developed. Learning language now becomes increasingly difficult if the infant has not already been exposed to sounds and speech.

An infant who has lost hearing at birth or a few months post-birth but has been diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss only after 3 years has greater difficulty in acquiring spoken language because the critical period has passed. Whatever residual hearing that the baby had at birth has also atrophied (or is in the process of atrophying) since it was not made use of. The brain is also nearly matured. Since it was not previously exposed to sounds and spoken language, it struggles to make sense of new sounds and associating them with meaning in order to develop spoken language. This is the reason why many children who are diagnosed after 3 years struggle to develop spoken language.