Teaching sign language is not a time-consuming chore. Rather, it can be worked rather easily into your life as a natural part of communication with your child as well as the rest of your family. You can start as early as six months of age. Remember, though, that babies can take weeks or even months before making their first sign.

No prior knowledge of sign language is required! Most parents learn right along with their children with the aid of a sign language dictionary, baby signing book, or website.

Advantages to infants taught sign language:

• Can communicate wants and needs to their caregivers at an early age
• Will have an earlier understanding of the English language
• May learn to speak earlier
• Could have an above-average ability later in life to learn a new language
• May possibly have a higher I.Q.

Parents who sign with their baby may experience:

• Lower frustration levels (for both parent and baby) because the baby can communicate with you
• Deeper bonding with their baby because they have greater insight into their baby’s mind
• A higher level of trust from their baby because he or she knows that you understand what he or she is trying to tell you
• Satisfaction. What a great feeling it is to know that you can effectively communicate with your pre-verbal infant

Be consistent. This is probably the most important thing to remember. Consistency - from the very beginning of your signing experience with your child - will be the most helpful to you both and essential for your success. Use the same sign the same way for the same action or object. This will help your baby become familiar with the sign and she will be able to sign it back to you sooner. Don’t kill yourself trying to learn an entire signed language in a week, however - concentrate on a few to a handful of signs and build from there.

Be happy. Frowning and bored voices will not make a baby eager to sign.

Be open to interpretation. Babies will not always make a sign correctly the first time they sign it, just like they won’t speak a word correctly the first time they speak it. Keep signing the word the correct way and your baby will soon grow more precise as he matures and his fine motor skills improve.

Be open to suggestion. Sometimes a baby will create a sign for herself. Feel free to continue using it, and applaud her creativity. You can also easily adapt a made-up sign to a more formal sign (such as ASL) just as you would encourage her with proper speech. Acknowledge your child when she uses her invented sign and model back with the ASL version. She will soon “correct” herself.

Be full of praise. Act excited when the baby uses a sign correctly, and let your baby know how wonderful you think he is.

Be expressive. Use your face and body in addition to your hands. You should also always say the word as you sign it. Alter the tone of your voice depending on the context. Make it sound fun and interesting.

Be varied. Not as in the sign of course, but as in the places you sign. Don’t just sign at home, for example, or when company’s around, or when you’re not in the public eye. Signing with your baby works best when it’s worked into your life as a natural means of communicaton instead of something you only do part of the time or only in certain places.

Be patient. Babies can take weeks or even months before they make their first sign. And sometimes even when they’ve done a sign correctly for days and even months they may stop using it. Keep on doing what you are doing and eventually they will get back on track.

Be prepared to be amazed. Your child will open your eyes to his world and it’s a great place to be!

”Babies are talking with their hands before they can speak!”

Baby Signing Research

Child rearing & development researchers have been studying the results of teaching hearing babies to sign for more than twenty years. Research in this field is expanding each year as the benefits of using sign language with preverbal babies becomes more compelling to researchers as well as parents.
Acredolo & Goodwyn. In 1982, two researchers, Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn noticed that young babies were spontaneously using simple hand movements to represent words they weren't yet able to say. This discovery prompted Acredolo and Goodwyn to conduct research, which spanned two decades, to study the effects of teaching hearing babies to sign. Much of this research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Acredolo and Goodwyn conducted a longitudinal study that involved 103 eleven month old babies. What these researchers found was amazing, babies that communicated with sign language before they could speak actually learned to talk sooner and scored higher on intelligence tests when compared to their non-signing peers. These babies developed larger vocabularies, displayed more self-confidence and engaged in more sophisticated play than their non-signing peers. Even at age eight, children who had learned to sign as infants scored significantly higher on IQ tests than those who had not! In addition, the parents of these babies reported a decrease in frustration and a strengthening of the bond between themselves and their babies.

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