Chattering Children

Our Mission

Established in 1999, Chattering Children's mission is to equip children with hearing loss and their families with a foundation for lifelong learning through listening and spoken language, and to integrate them into a hearing world.

Chattering Children currently serves children with hearing loss (some of whom also have visual, motor and/or learning disabilities) who in live Washington, DC, northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs. Chattering Children provides ongoing educational and clinical services to children with hearing loss throughout their growth and development, as well as coaching and education to their families.

Left untreated, hearing loss in early childhood causes a cascade of other delays in language, cognition and social development. Early intervention is imperative if children with deafness are to overcome the challenge posed by the lack of access to sound early in life. Universal newborn hearing screening was heralded as a huge advancement in treating hearing loss because age at intervention is clearly linked with improved outcomes. But, each year the CDC reports that approximately one-third of all children identified through universal newborn hearing screening are lost to follow-up. Those children who do not receive early intervention are destined for a lifetime of poor outcomes.

We would like to reach more infants and children who are in need of our services due to limited access to diagnostic testing centers and long waits at centers properly equipped to test infants. Chattering Children is pursuing funding to upgrade audiological equipment that will enable us to provide diagnostic testing for newborns and young children with complex cases who have been identified to have hearing loss, but lack access to timely intervention. The equipment we hope to acquire is portable, enabling Chattering Children to work with local agencies and clinicians to provide screenings across the metropolitan area, meeting these children and their families where they live, eliminating access, travel and transportation obstacles.