Early language learning experiences affect other areas of development and are critical

to children’s future success. Language is necessary to many other aspects of

development, including cognitive, social and psychological development. A lack of
language skills can have devastating effects. Poor language skills are often linked to
academic difficulty, behavioral problems, poor self-esteem, and social immaturity.
Researchers have long known that poor communication abilities can be linked to high
levels of delinquency, violence, and incarceration. Even the “terrible twos” stage of child
development is thought to be caused by children’s frustration at being unable to
communicate with their caregivers. 

 Sign language provides the earliest possible mode through which children can learn
expressive language skills. Use of sign language with young children, of any hearing
status, is known to promote early communication. The reason for this is that children
begin to learn language long before they are physically capable of reproducing speech.
Given exposure to a visual language of signs, children are able to master language at
an earlier stage.

For successful literacy and academic skills, children need full access to a foundational language (Paul,
1998; Wilbur, 2000). Children who are D/HH frequently lack full access to a foundational language,
because either they lack exposure to fluent sign language models (Beal-Alvarez, 2014)

Without these foundational language skills, children may lack the necessary “automatization of lower-
level language processing skills” required for academic success (Marschark et al., 2009, p. 366). Students
who are D/HH fall along a communication continuum from listening and spoken language to sign-
supported speech, speech-supported sign language, and the use of ASL (Bela-Alvarez, 2014)

Puppetry has a quality that no other medium shows: puppets are catalysts of communication. Even if a
person is traumatised and cannot speak about what he/she went through and cannot trust in an other
person, a puppet will make communication possible. In therapy, patients show us their problems in the
fi rst 45 minutes, through puppets. But mostly, many months will pass until they carefully try out how to
solve their problems.(Kroflin, 2012)

Puppets and dolls are incomplete. They do not have a personality which can be overwhelming,
demanding or judging. They do not have a history of life and are waiting for the one we create with
them. They only live if we give them life. To all therapists, teachers and parents they are superior. They
support communication on every intellectual level. They stay neutral when others make demands and
ask for results.(Kroflin, 2012)