This Family and Practitioner Brief discusses how deaf children who have not had access to a complete language from birth often encounter unique challenges in developing academic language skills, particularly in the realm of inference-making.

Based on the experiences of one of the authors teaching philosophy for children (P4C) in Iran, the paper asks whether respecting children's rationality, in the form of cultivating their ability and disposition to think critically, is in their best interest in an authoritarian context such as Iran. It argues that, in authoritarian contexts, respect…