Signing with Your Baby

Did you know that babies can learn to talk with their hands long before they can speak with their mouths? The gross motor skills necessary for signing develop before the fine motor skills necessary for speech, which means that by 7 or 8 months of age, your baby could be telling you when he wants to nurse, when she wants you to read her a book, or when he’s all done eating and wants down from his high chair.

Research has shown that teaching some simple signs to pre-verbal children will have a multitude of beneficial effects, including:
•    Earlier language development
•    Increased vocabulary
•    Reduction in frustration, biting, and tantrums
•    Enhanced self esteem
•    Improved memory skills compared with children that don’t sign
•    Development of spatial relations and visual motor skills
•    Increased reading and spelling skills
•    Higher IQ
•    Parent-child bonding
•    Bridges communication gaps in multi-lingual families and childcare facilities
•    Using signs with children with disabilities can empower them with a way to communicate their wants and needs at an early age, thereby reducing frustration and anger.

If you choose to sign with your baby, you should select a program that uses American Sign Language (ASL), rather than invented or made-up signs. ASL is the third-most common language in the U.S. (after English and Spanish) and is widely used in many daycares and preschools. ASL signs are easy for babies and toddlers to understand and make because most of them are iconic, which means that the sign represents or imitates the object or action being signed. Ex: Milk is signed with the hand opening and closing into a fist to represent the milking of a cow. Another benefit is that using ASL signs reinforces motor skill development by encouraging the movement of the arms and hands towards the midline area of the body.

You don’t have to learn the complete language of ASL to sign with your baby. You can start with just a few signs and add on to those as your baby begins to sign back. You can start signing with your baby right from birth with the sign for nurse or milk, but most parents wait until their baby is 5 – 6 months old to start signing. Most babies at that age will start signing back within a couple of months. There are books and videos on the market to help you learn the signs, but the best way by far is to take a signing class with your baby. A class provides a fun, consistent environment for you and baby where you can meet other signing babies and parents, learn songs and activities to use at home with your baby to help reinforce the signs, plus, the teacher can make sure you’re making the signs correctly!