Communication difficulty with hearing peers is an additional stressor on the child. At early ages, a child may become frustrated trying to understand teachers and other students and trying to be understood.
The inclusion of deaf students in a hearing classroom may slow down the instruction. If a teacher is constantly checking to see if they are being understood, the amount of information they can convey to the class might be reduced.
Deaf children can easily miss information. Many times a deaf child in a hearing class will miss out on information, whether this is because of interpreter error or simply for comments that are not interpreted, like remarks between students.
Lack of standardized qualifications for interpreters. Many hearing parents assume that the interpreters provided by the school are skilled and highly trained, but this may not be the case. Unlike medical, legal, and many other settings, there are NO current standards of qualification that must be met by educational interpreters.
Some classes are hearing-centric. Some required classes, like music, are geared for the hearing and have little relevance to a deaf child.
Children rarely taught pride in Deaf Culture. Because they are in an environment, which follows the medical perspective, deaf students are rarely taught to cherish their Deaf heritage and American Sign Language skills.
Lack of Deaf role models and friends. In a mainstream school with few deaf students, a deaf child will often have no similarly deaf friends. The interpreter might be the only other person in the school that uses sign language, and might become cast in the role of confidante to the student, which is a role conflict. Likewise, there may no be deaf adults for the student to use as role models.
Residential programs place the deaf child in a school specifically designed for the deaf and hard of hearing. Hearing children do not attend such schools, and the deaf children often live on-campus during the week, even in the lower elementary grades.