I have decided to do baby sign language with Elias. His hearing is completely fine, but signing with hearing children actually has lots of short and long term benefits for babies. you use normal ASL signs and incorporate them into baby’s daily life, this is done because babies can learn to sign before they can learn to speak. Of course you speak while you are signing, so the baby learns both, he will start out signing and will eventually do both together until he drops the signing for speaking. (they do this whenever they can speak well enough for it to be more efficient to speak than to sign.)
Babies can usually start signing when they are 6 months old. some people don’t start until the baby is 6 months or older, but since some babies can catch on and start signing as early as 3 or 4 months old (and it will probably take awhile for me to sign consistently with him) I am starting with Elias now, just before he turns 2 months. It may be 4 months before we see any results, but it could be much less…we’ll see!
Here are the main reasons I’m doing it.
1. He can communicate his needs to us before he can verbalize them. This alone is wonderful for many reasons, and for me reason enough to do it! this was the only reason I knew when I decided to do it with Elias, but as I have read more about it, there are so many more reasons to want to.
Any one with baby experience knows that there are those times when baby will scream and cry and you have NO IDEA why. This can be so sad for both mommy and baby, but imagine if baby could sign to you specifically why they are crying; if they are in pain, or if they are scared of something, or even hungry. This can also help lessen the need to cry because the baby can just look at you and sign milk instead of screaming until you figure out that he wanted to be nursed.
2. Something I didn’t know is how much it is proven to increase the baby’s vocabulary. By the time baby is 2 they have on average 50 more spoken words in their vocab than non signing babies, and many more signed words that they can’t pronounce yet. Signing helps them learn to speak, because they are learning words through 3 of their senses instead of just hearing the word they are also seeing the word signed and signing (touch) the word themselves. This makes a huge network dealing with language in their brains, which can help them learn languages in the future. Which is good for Elias because I’m teaching him Tagalog and English now, and we are planning to have Alex teach him Greek as soon as he can read and write in English and Tagalog.
3. It makes them smarter! For many reasons, not only all those pathways it creates in their little brains, but also because they are able to ask questions about things they wonder about, before they can speak their curiosity. (imagine having to wait 2 years before getting an answer to something you wonder about!)This gives mommy and daddy the opportunity to teach them while they are so tiny, and their brains are absorbing everything like a sponge. Tests showed that kids that signed as babies have on average an IQ 12 points higher than those that did not. (tests were do with 140 families randomly assigned to be signing or nonsigning)
4. its easy – you just incorporate the signs into your normal talking to baby, and he will catch on!
These are the main reasons I decided to sign with Elias.
Some people wonder if it will make baby speak later, and therefore not be as beneficial as it seems. But it is proven to actually HELP them learn to speak, and encourage them because mommy and daddy can understand what they are trying to say even when they can’t pronounce everything quite right. As soon as they learn to speak without using signs to clarify what they mean, they will drop the signs and just speak, since it is more efficient to speak then to sign. But it is so useful when they are learning to talk but you can’t quite understand them yet, instead of frustration on both sides, baby can speak and sign and tell you EXACTLY what he means!
I am planning to find some sort of ASL classes to put him in when he is old enough, so he does not lose the skill, once he can speak, there is no sense in wasting that knowledge, and he may as well learn more while we’re at it.
The book I’m reading suggests that you start with somewhere around 10 signs first, and then add more as you get used to signing those all the time because it is important that you are consistent and sign the words every time it is appropriate to contextually or baby will just assume they are random gestures.
The words I have chosen to start with are:
change
diaper
milk
more
paci
bath
dog
grandma
outside
daddy
I picked these because they are words that will help him to let us know what he needs or wants. Or they are things he sees and interacts with a lot right now. As he grows up I’m sure we will quickly be adding words like “stop”, “no”, “down” and “quiet” but I think these are the best starter words because they are things he loves and that will help him to catch on faster.
Im sure I will be writing a lot more about our signing journey, though it may be a few months before we start seeing any response from Eli, it will be worth the seemingly fruitless effort at first! I’m so excited to see how this works out!
the book i’m reading about it right now is called “baby sign language basics” by monta Z briant
