enabling them to interact with users of multiple languages. For deaf and hard of hearing children in particular, learning both a signed language from birth and spoken/written language as they are able to access those modalities can protect the child from the harms that come from the language deprivation that occurs when a child is delayed in accessing language in any modality. From Birth About 90-95% of deaf and hard of hearing children are born to hearing parents. Only 5-10% are born to deaf parents. Currently, there are newborn hearing screening practices in place that inform parents of their newborn's hearing status within the first few weeks of the child's life. If a baby is diagnosed with hearing loss, hospitals usually provide access to a team that includes primary care physicians, audiologists, and other health care providers to help the family decide which path is most appropriate for their family or their child to ensure that the baby develops normally with language. However, some physicians report that they aren't confident about informing the parents of deaf and hard of hearing children about other steps to take in addition to visiting an audiologist. Sign Language When deaf children are born to Deaf parents who use sign language, their language exposure is constant and fully accessible from birth. This is equivalent to the quality of language exposure received by hearing children. These children thus demonstrate typical language acquisition. However, most deaf and hard of hearing children have hearing parents with no experience in sign language. There are many options available to these parents to help them provide their child with as much fully accessible language as possible from birth onward. First, many schools for the deaf offer sign language classes to parents who want to learn to sign with their kid. Some schools even offer Parent Infant programs which allow parents to bring their infants to the class and provide both language instruction to the parents, sign language exposure to the infant, and structured play time for the parents and infants to all interact in sign language with signing instructors present to facilitate and answer questions. For toddlers and preschoolers, there are signing preschool classes offered at most schools for the deaf. These are places where deaf and hard of hearing children can come and spend the school day in fun, language rich classrooms which may provide more fluent sign language exposure