How Early Childhood Interventions Endanger the Home Language and Home Culture: A Call to Value the Role of Families

This chapter renders an analysis of Early Intervention (EI) in immigrant families of young children with disabilities. The author examines the challenges and opportunities to integrate home languages and cultures into EI by posing that language and culture are interconnected and must be considered as family resources. Through the experiences of caregivers and professionals, the author considers how professionals can maintain use of the home language without interfering with second language acquisition. Only by creating strong partnerships between EI professionals and families can disability be understood in a cultural context to provide culturally responsive services. These perspectives are illustrated in the case study of a 3-year-old, who shifts to English. Removal of the home language affected the social role of the grandmother within the family and her interactions with the child. This chapter shows that families used languages in complex ways that included translanguaging, that family caregivers and professionals had poorly defined perspectives on how to help the children, and that the practices of professionals had a limited focus on collaboration with the families.