Teaching Babies Sign Language

When Joseph was a baby we taught him sign language. We are doing the same with Blake. It was amazing how much it helped him to be able to communicate his wants and needs to us! We introduced sign language probably around 9 months. It was hard for us at first because we would forget to do it. We started with the sign" more." I would try to remember to do eat, change, milk, more and all done, but our main focus was more. They suggest doing it at meal time because babies (and just about every animal) are motivated by food. However, Joseph was less than interested in eating. Therefore, I started to do it when we were reading books.  He loved reading books and he would want to read one after another. When he was around 10 months old I was reading him the book Hug by Jez Alborough, he kept wanting me to read it over and over, so I would sign more each time we would read it again.  While I was signing "more" Joseph signed it, too!! It was so exciting! Once this happened he caught on more quickly.  It was interesting, but with Joseph his signs started right about the time that he started saying words.  I think the signs encouraged him to communicate more and helped his verbal language development as well. Even more interesting, was once he was efficiently communicating verbally, he stopped using the signs. It was like the signs were a transitional phase for him. It really helped to alleviate temper tantrums because he was able to let us know what he wanted and we were able to fulfill his needs. Otherwise, we would have just had to sit there and guess what he wanted. I would highly encourage all parents to use sign language with their children. It doesn't have to be a planned out curriculum and it doesn't even have to be very many signs. Of course, if you want to incorporate more signs, I can't see how that would hurt, but at least doing a few helps tremendously. Below are some articles I found on sign language. I always appreciate when things aren't biased so I have included articles both for and against/indifferent to teaching babies sign language.


Below are abstracts from scientific journal articles (you have to pay to view the complete article): 

Teaching gestural signs to infants to advance child development: A review of the evidence 

Abstract

Should parents be encouraged to teach their hearing infants to communicate using gestural signs? Does signing in infancy advance child behaviour and development as claimed by many commercially available products for parents? To answer these questions, a review was undertaken to evaluate currently available research studies that examined the effectiveness of prelingual signing for normally developing, hearing infants. Databases, reference lists and the Internet were searched for relevant documents using a pre-determined search protocol. Seventeen reports met the review’s inclusion criteria and were retrieved and evaluated. The review failed to support claims that signing facilitates language development, due to insufficiencies in scientific methods and to equivocal results. 

http://fla.sagepub.com/content/25/2/235.short

Left Hemisphere Cerebral Specialization for Babies While Babbling

Science 30 August 2002:
Vol. 297 no. 5586 p. 1515
DOI: 10.1126/science.1074941 

Baby babbling is the universal developmental milestone before the onset of language production in humans, yet little is known about whether the neural determinants of this behavior are fundamentally linguistic (1, 2) or reflect only oral-motor developments (3, 4). In adults, the presence of right asymmetry in mouth aperture during linguistic tasks as contrasted with left or equal mouth opening during nonlinguistic tasks has been widely used as a key measure of left hemisphere cerebral specialization for language (5). Given the noninvasive nature of mouth asymmetry studies, this technique is ideally suited to inferring whether functional cerebral asymmetries of babies' earliest productions exist. If babbling is fundamentally linguistic in nature, then left hemispheric specialization should be reflected in right mouth asymmetry while babbling. If babbling is fundamentally motoric in nature, then equal hemispheric participation should be reflected in equal mouth opening while babbling. The results will provide insight into the neural basis of babbling and hence into the origins of human language.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5586/1515.short

Below are internet articles (obviously not as reliable as above):

The Philadelphia Inquirer
Parents finding benefit in teaching babies sign language as well as speech
http://articles.philly.com/2010-07-19/news/24970863_1_american-sign-language-basic-signs-hand-movement#.ToNmAVEi6Sg.blogger

5 Reasons Why Parents Teach Signs to Hearing Babies

by Eileen Ladino, M.A.
In the past decade, a growing number of parents worldwide have discovered the joys of using simple sign language with their preverbal babies. Why sign language? Babies can gain control of their hands long before they develop the oral motor skills necessary for speech, so signs allow little ones to express their thoughts without crying or whining - a bonus for both babies and parents. But reducing frustration is just one reason parents love using Sign Language. Here's what researchers Linda Acredcolo, PhD and Susan Goodwyn, PhD, the authors of Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk (Contemporary Books, 2002), have found in their 20 years of research on the effects of Baby Signs on babies' development. Sign Language . . .
1. help babies talk sooner . . . and boost spoken vocabulary
2. empower babies to direct adults' attention to what they want to talk about
3. reduce frustration
4. provide a strong foundation for early literacy
5. stimulate intellectual development
1. Using sign language with babies help them talk sooner
One concern that parents have is the effect of sign language on speech development. Acredolo and Goodwyn have found that Baby Signers actually talk sooner than non-signers. The reason being that they are using expressive language from an earlier age, playing with words, ideas and pairing them up before they have even developed the oral motor skills necessary for speech. In addition, they have found that by age 8, children who signed had stronger reading skills than those who did not. For more information on this NIH funded research, please go to http://www.tinyfingers.com/benefits.html
2. Sign Language Empowers Babies to Initiate Conversations
Most babies will show signs of wanting to communicate by coming up with their own simple gestures: they will raise their arms to say "Pick me up," reach for things they want, pat the couch to say "up", or open their mouth wide when they want more food. Signs expand on this idea and offer children an opportunity to communicate about specific ideas or concepts.
After returning from a walk around the neighborhood, Isabel looked at her mom and signed "airplane."
"Yes," her mom said, "we saw a big airplane up in the sky today. It was flying to a place far away."
In this exchange, the child expressed a topic on her mind and the parent was able to elaborate on it, modeling language on a topic the child initiated.
3. Sign Language Reduces Frustration
Parents and researchers agree that after learning sign language as a communication tool, both child and parent have fewer moments of frustration that stem from a lack of communication. Tantrums decrease, and parents have found that they can discipline or redirect their child in public without using their voice, therefore avoiding embarrassing moments for the child.
The most frustrating age for a toddler is 17-22 months because although he is mobile and he understands what you're saying, he may not be able to communicate about what he wants. Sign language can help clarify communication between parent and child, replacing grunts and whining with clear expressions of thoughts. Children as young as 6 to 8 months old can understand the signs for "milk," "more," and "all done." Between 8 and 12 months, children often begin signing "more" when they are out of Cheerios or would like another push on a swing, or they will sign "all done" when they have had enough to eat or want to leave the mall. Once children start speaking, parents have found that signs help fill in the gaps until the child is able to intelligibly communicate all the thoughts he wants to share.
4. Sign Language Provides a Strong Foundation for Early Literacy
Signs make books more meaningful to babies. Your child can be an active participant in story time, labeling pictures and predicting what comes next in their favorite books. This kind of participation and interaction helps children understand the similarities and differences between concepts. When they first learn the sign for "dog," they may generalize it and label all mammals in a book "dog." Once the parent has helped them learn to see the distinguishing features of a dog, a horse and a bear, they can then learn to generalize the sign for "dog" to the family pet, a stuffed animal and the star of Blue's Clues, given appropriate feedback from adults.
5. Sign Language Stimulates Intellectual Development
Participation in reading activities, along with the vocabulary boost inherent in early communication, lead to stronger early reading skills. Marilyn Daniels, author of Dancing With Words: Signing for Hearing Children's Literacy (Bergin & Garvey, 2001), found in her research that hearing students in pre-kindergarten who had the benefit of adding the visual and kinesthetic (movement) elements of sign language to verbal and written language scored significantly higher on standardized vocabulary tests than hearing students with no sign instruction. Adding sign language to verbal communication has been found to help enhance a preschool child's vocabulary, spelling and early reading skills.
Conclusion
Many parents find that using Sign Language with their baby stimulates language development, strengthens the parent-infant bond and provides a window into their baby's world. For information on classes, books and videos, please see Tiny Fingers or contact us at classes@tinyfingers.com
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Eileen Ladino is the founder of Tiny Fingers. She earned an MA in Deaf Education from Gallaudet University and has 15 years of experience as a teacher of both deaf and hearing students and as a freelance sign language interpreter. She is now experiencing the joy of using American Sign Language with her own hearing daughter and is dedicated to improving communication between babies and their parents & caregivers through her tiny fingers classes and materials.