How do children develop?

The main areas of development are: communication, attending/listening/vocalisation, social /emotional, play, physical and motor skills.  All these are important, but communication and language are the interlinking factors across the board.  For deaf children, therefore the focus is on the development of communication and language.

Below are some examples of tools to help track how children develop.

• The Monitoring Protocol for Deaf Children and associated documents explains the connection across all areas of development, the significance that development and interaction are closely linked and tracks that child’s progress.
• Universally Speaking: The ages and stages of children’s communication development From birth to 5 years  is a booklet from the Communication Trust showing normal patterns of language development in young children.
• The Integrated Scales of Development supports the monitoring and tracking of the child’s development from birth to 48 months in the areas of: Listening; Receptive Language; Expressive Language; Speech; Cognition and Pragmatics. There is also a handy tracking and monitoring form the clinician may want to keep in the child’s file.  This is normed on typical development.
• In her article ‘Supporting Communicative Development of Infants and Toddlers with Hearing Loss’, Kristina Blaiser, PhD reviews the evidence behind benefits of early parent-child interactions.  She outlines strategies and resources for speech-language pathologists to use in supporting communication development with infants and toddlers with hearing loss.
• Dodd et al outline norms for speech and phonological development in children under 7 years for typically developing children.
• Talking point is a website with information on communication that gives milestones of different ages and stages of communication and ways of developing this.
• Harvard University’s Centre on the Developing child provide this activities guide for enhancing and practicing executive functioning skills.