Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS)

Resources shared from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to support Early On.

  • icon Your Baby’s Hearing and Communicative Development Checklist (PDF) - Posted:03/05/2021

    • This resource from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) provides a checklist for hearing and communicative development for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The NIDCD supports and conducts research and research training on the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language and provides health information, based upon scientific discovery, to the public.

    This document does reference being hard of hearing as a 'hearing problem'. We are working to move away from the designation of being hard of hearing as being a problem. 

    Some babies are identified as deaf or hard of hearing within months of birth. Other childrens’ hearing levels change over time.

    It is important to know what to expect as your baby grows because any drop in hearing level can delay the development of voice, speech, and language skills. The checklist below presents the average age by which most babies accomplish a variety of early speech and language skills.