To be fair, I had never heard of teaching sign to a hearing child until I noticed a friend of mine had an uncanny ability to figure out what her daughter wanted even though she wasn't speaking. Her daughter only knew about ten signs, but was using them to communicate valuable information. As soon as I found out about this, I acquired copies of Baby Signs
by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and Sign With Your Baby by Joseph Garcia. Then it seemed like I was seeing references to baby sign all over the place: books at the bookstore, DVDs at the baby goods store, classes at the local community house, articles in the weekly baby newsletter. Most of the women in my mother's group had heard of it, though I think I am the only one who is actually using it. With all this exposure, I was surprised that someone in the childcare industry had not heard of it.There area number of supposed advantages to teaching your child sign:
- It takes years for children to develop the oral skills to say all the sounds in their native language. Manual dexterity develops much earlier and research suggests that infants develop the ability to use language before they develop the muscle coordination required to speak clearly.
- Learning to communicate at an earlier age reduces frustration for both the child and the parents.
- Using sign allows children to learn fundamentals of language earlier. Garcia found that children who learn sign language are speaking about objects at the age when children who aren't using sign are only starting to identify objects. Acredolo and Goodwyn concluded that babies using signs understood more words and learned to speak more easily than babies who weren't using signs.
My child can only say three words orally, but he's currently using at least five signs. Like all children, these words have a much broader meaning than a fluent speaker would attribute to the same words. For instance, the sign for potty may mean "I need to use the potty", "I have just peed", or "There's the potty". But what a relief! Instead of crying, if he has a sign for what he needs he silently moves his hands. I no longer need to guess if he is thirsty or hungry. When he signs "potty" I know he either needs to use the potty or needs a nappy change. Sign hasn't turned him into the angel child; he still yells when he wants something or when he is unhappy, but only when he doesn't have a more effective way to communicate or doesn't get what he wants.
He seems to be so excited about being able to identify something and share that with us. For instance, he recently started using the sign for "hat". He now signs whenever he sees a hat or a helmet, not only when he wants to put one on or look at it more closely, but also as if to say "hey, I see a hat and I know what it is, and I can tell you that I know what it is." This creates opportunities for conversation that would not have happened if he weren't initiating it. These conversations expand his understanding of the world and of English.
As it would be when learning any language, my son's pronunciation is at times difficult to understand. For instance, the sign for "more" can be confused with clapping (I'm still not sure which one he is using), and it took me at least a day to figure out his sign for drink. But now that his pronunciation is familiar, it is becoming very easy to understand him.
When I first started this process, I used signs from ASL. Then I started looking for variations because some signs are just too difficult for a young child with limited manual skills. I'm not opposed to making up signs, as Acredolo and Goodwyn suggest, and as I learn to understand my son's "pronunciation" I realize that the official sign doesn't matter all that much as long as we understand what he's saying. Since very few people he interacts with are likely to know sign, it doesn't really matter what signs we use.
It has taken very little effort to teach our son the signs he knows. Because I own two books on baby sign, we have an accessible reference to learn new signs ourselves. Then it is just a matter of using them at the right moment. As my son learns more signs and expands his interest in the world, I learn more signs to share with him.
