Dennis Finlan
05/04/2007
INFANT BABY SIGNING
The benefits of teaching every baby how to take advantage of
signs in communication before they can actually speak can
greatly enhance not only the bond a parent has with their
child but research has shown that it will not only lead to
early communication but it helps babies learn how to talk,
it stimulates social development, and can help to improve
self esteem. (Acredolo, 1992)
Research has shown that many tantrums come from being unable
to effectively communicate what they are asking for and
ultimately becoming frustrated. This paper will talk about
the benefits of teaching a baby sign language and why it can
benefit every child and parent alike. I will also advocate
teaching signs to infant using ASL versus letting the
parents make up their own signs for one reason, if all
parents and children learn the same signs for the same words
it not only will increase the use of the signs when children
are trying to communicate with one another but will also
enable children to communicate with other parents, teachers,
babysitters, etc, and will lead to an easier transition from
one setting to another for the child.
In
the mid 1980s there was research being done by two different
groups, Joseph Garcia in one and Linda Acredolo and Susan
Goodwyn in the other. In 1987, Garcia began to research the
use of ASL with hearing babies from deaf or signing parents
and found that babies who are exposed to signs regularly at
6-7 months of age can begin expressive communication by
their 8-9 month. Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr Susan Goodwyn
conducted a study funded by the National Institutes of Child
Health and Human Development. The study showed that signing
babies understood more words, had larger vocabularies,
increased interest in books, and engaged in more
sophisticated play than non-signing babies. Parents in the
study also noted decreased frustration, increased
communication and increased bonding with their child. They
revisited the families in the original study when the
children were seven and eight years old. The children who
signed as babies had a mean IQ of 114 compared to the
non-signing control group's mean of 102 (Acredolo and
Goodwyn, 2000).
Both groups went on to develop a baby signing program with
one major difference. Joseph Garcia promotes the use of a
standard sign language like ASL where as Acredolo and
Goodwyn promote parents making up their own signs.
One thing that is consistent in the research articles I
reviewed was that most babies already incorporated their own
signs in communication in order to try and convey a message
to who they were talking too. While the signs varied from
child to child many of them were already trying to convey a
message without speaking but rather with signs.
The one criticism I found of teaching babies to sign was
that they would not have the motivation to learn to talk and
subsequently they would learn to talk at a slower rate than
those that did learn baby signs. While that seemed to be
the only voiced concern with baby signs not a single study
that I found showed that this was in fact true. In fact,
some of the studies did show that the more signs a baby knew
the faster that child learned to talk leading the
researchers to conclude that the more interested in learning
signs the baby was the more interested they were in learning
to talk and subsequently learned to talk faster than the
other children. (Acredolo, 1985)
Learning to sign can help a child and parent to bond because
once a child starts to learn to communicate then they can
start a conversation with their parents just as easily as a
parent can start a conversation with a child. A child will
be able to communicate more effectively what they are asking
for which will lead to less frustration on the part of the
parent and child. I a friend who has a daughter that is now
almost 3 years old and I didn’t notice until I started to
learn sign that even now, when she says daddy or mommy she
also instinctively gives the sign for father and mother.
When I asked "where’s your dad" she will say "that is my
daddy" and she will point when she says ‘that’ and will sign
‘father’ when she says daddy and she does it every time.
Learning to sign can also help to build a child’s self
esteem by giving them the necessary confidence that they can
communicate effectively. To use a real life example; some
close friends of mine has a 10 month old daughter who they
have been teaching signs too. We were out to dinner last
week, at Ernesto’s, and she gave the sign for eat every time
she wanted another bite. She also had a couple small toys,
a cat and a dog, and she would hand them too me and sign
what they were while mumbling something unrecognizable.
Prior to this class I didn’t know these signs and wouldn’t
have recognized this communication but the point for this
story was that she was very well behaved in a hectic and
loud environment. She seemed to be very confident and was
not shy in trying and communicating with me, someone who has
only seen her 5 times. At the end of the dinner she
actually gave the ‘bed’ sign indicating she was ready to
go.
Most of the criticism surrounding Garcia’s push to teach a
common sign language like ASL versus having parents making
up their own signs is that many infants don’t have enough
dexterity to shape their fingers in a way that allows them
to make some of the ASL signs plus it is only something they
will use for a short period of time. Teaching them these
signs helps to build the motor skills that are so important
in the development of children. But most importantly it
allows the transition from caregivers, to babysitters, to
teachers, to parents to playing with other children to be so
much easier because they will all be using the same sign.
It will help to reduce the frustration that comes with not
being understood plus it will enable the child to more
effectively communicate with all sorts of people thus
building their self esteem.
While there is some criticism of teaching infants to sign
none of it seems to be backed up by any research I have
found. Looking at the benefits as identified by the
research that I have found as well as based off of my own
limited experience with children who have learned to sign as
infants and those who have not, I believe that every parent
should work on teaching signs to their children in order to
communicate at an early age. I believe that by teaching a
common sign language like ASL you open up opportunities for
children to actually talk to other children who also have
learned the same signs as well as potentially communicate
with other parents, babysitters, and teachers which will all
help with socialization of children which is so important.
REFERENCES
Acredolo, Linda, PH.D., Goodwyn, Susan,
PH.D. (1992). Baby Signs; How to Talk with Your Baby
Before Your Baby Can Talk. Chicago, Illinois:
Contemporary Books
Acredolo, Linda. PH.D., and Goodwyn,
Susan, PH.D. (1985). Symbolic gesturing in language
development. Human Development, 28, 40-49
Allen, Tania. (2004) Signing the way?.
Speech & Language Therapy in Practice, pp 4-6
Garcia, Joseph. (1999). Sign with
your Baby. Bellingham, WA: Stratton-Kehl Publications,
Inc.
Goodwyn, Susan, PH.D., Acredolo, Linda,
PH.D., Brown, Catherine. (2000). Impact of Symbolic
Gesturing on Early Language Development. Human Science
Press. Volume 81, pp 81-102.