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Baby Sign involves using sign language to communicate with infants and toddlers. Children of an early age have a desire to communicate their needs and wishes, but lack the ability to do so clearly. This often leads to frustration and tantrums. With practice parents and infants(also toddlers) can communicate fluently and clearly. Hand-eye coordination is easier than the coordination of speech, which requires coordinating the lips, tongue, breath, and vocal chords simultaneously. By using simple signs for common words such as "eat", "sleep", "more", "hug", "play", "cookie", "teddy bear", etc., infants can learn to express their needs before they are able to produce understandable speech. There are at least 2 types of signing with infants. The first one is "Need Based". This means that it's a necessity to one. Some examples of "Need Based" language are things like: drink, food, sleepy, hot/cold, change me, etc. Maybe "drink" or "thirst" would be something simple like holding a "bottle" to your mouth. Eating could be as simple as putting a "spoon" in your mouth, or maybe rubbing your stomach. The other type is called, "Highly Motivating". These are the luxury things and entertaining things. Stuff like: Doggy, Television, Toy, a friend, etc. You can teach an infant the signs to whatever he/she enjoys. If you notice that the infant likes something, then maybe you should try to figure out a sign for it using body language or hand gestures. Remember that not all infants are the same. They don't all have the same signs and the things they like/dislike may vary. When teaching your infant sign language, you should do it during the given activity. If you are playing with the infant and trying to teach the infant the gesture, "food", then the infant will start to learn that "food" is playtime. Eventually you will see that when the infant likes something and he or she might give you a look as if to say, "what's the sign for this?". Babies in deaf families, immersed in a signing environment, use simple signs from as early as 6 weeks. Some parents feel that they don't have enough time to teach their baby sign language, but by using sign with each other in front of the baby, they will need to spend little time in actual instruction. Use of baby sign language is growing, but still not widespread. This is at least partially due to the fear that children who sign will not learn to speak properly later on. However, all available research shows that hearing children who sign as infants go on to develop particularly rich spoken vocabularies, as well as a tendency to solve problems through communication rather than tantrums. They may also teach sign to younger siblings after they themselves have switched to speaking with their parents. Parents who have some enthusiasm for sign language may already know the local adult signs for "eat", "sleep", "more", "play". It is common for parents to teach their babies non-simplified signs from adult sign language such as American Sign Language rather than specific Baby Sign.
Baby sign in popular culture | ||||||||
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