Teach Your Baby to Sign!
Teaching your baby sign language is good for both parent and your child. In this article, we examine the effects of teaching baby sign language and some evidence of the benefits of signing with your baby. You can be assured, baby sign language is a wonderful thing.
Many people are amazed that babies as young as 6 months old can learn sign language, thinking “How can that infant, when she can’t even talk?” But babies have always signed, albeit on an informal basis. Infantsdevelop the muscles in their hands before they develop the fine muscles of the mouth required for speeach. Thus, babies are equipped to communicate with you with their hands before they can speak. Most babies invent their own signs in order to convey their thoughts. For example, babies often hold their hands out when they want to be picked up and held. THis, of course, is a way of communication.
The fact is, an infant knows what you are saying long before she is able to speak the words herself. That is, her “receptive language” develops before she is able to talk. The fact that a baby cannot speak does not mean she cannot understand. In fact, babies understand a great deal before they can talk. So be careful what you say in front of your baby! Remember, the reason babies don’t speak isn’t necessarily for a lack of understanding. It may just be for a lack of the ability to control the movements of the mouth and tongue that are necessary to produce good speech. Those movements are undeveloped until babies are around two years old. But at a much earlier age, babies can controlthe hand movement necessary to produce signs. So don’t underestimate your baby. She will amaze you by what she can say, with her hands!
Now that we know how baby signs, the question becomes whether or not they should sign. The single biggest myth about [SPIN]teaching baby sign language|baby sign language[/spin] is that it can delay a baby’s speech. But nothing could be further from the truth[\spin]. There is absolutely no evidence that signing is clearly shows that signing children develop spoken words much faster than non-signing children. Signign is physically and cognitively stimulating for your infant. Signing stimlates your child’s auditory, visual and knisthetic senses. (She hears you speak, sees your movements and imitates your movements.) In fact, collected data on baby sign language is beginning to reveal that signing may be beneficial to children with speech development disorders. And signing infants typically become smarter adults, with higher IQs, than non-signging babies. So, have no doubt, teaching a baby sign lanaguage is good for babies overall development.
Aside from her overall development, there is a more practical reason to teach your baby to sign. Signing allows parents to communicate with pre-verbal babies! The inability to know what a child wants or needs is a primary source of the stress in parents’ lives. Parents who teach their children to sign avoid much of this frustration. And a baby’s ability to communicate at an early age enhances her overall development. Social interaction is crucial to a child’s development. By teaching baby to sign, she communicates earlier and more often. This provides her with more opportunities to express her emotions and communicate with other older children and adults. Ultimately, she will be more advanced, cognitively and socially, than non-signing children of the same age. So go ahead, have fun with signing with your baby.
