When I was pregnant with my first child I wanted to learn as much as I could about giving him a great start in life. What were the right toys? Activities? And future preschools? I stumbled upon baby sign language. At first, I wondered if it would delay a baby’s motivation to speak. Once this myth turned out to be false, I began my journey of not only learning about sign language for my baby’s development, but also gaining knowledge about children with special needs and their families. What do you know about sign language and children?
Once my son was born I began learning American Sign Language (ASL). It was pretty easy. All I had to do was watch Baby Signing Time and Signing Time DVDs by Rachel Coleman and we were learning hundreds of signs. I am not kidding…literally hundreds of signs. The program was fun to watch, and I found myself singing the songs while tidying up my home. They were so catchy.
Of course, the greatest pleasure was watching my 9 month old baby communicate with me what he wanted when he was upset. It decreased tantrums, and increased the interest in communication. One important thing to remember is to always speak when using the sign. Here are the two things we did to learn hundreds of signs easily:
- Watch Baby Signing Time or Signing Time DVDs. I’m not actually sure how many we have, but we have a lot. When we started a new DVD we watched it once a day for week before it became a part of our rotation of sign language DVDs. We picked them at random after that. Each watching session was about 30 minutes. We usually watched it right after dinner. With Amazon Prime Video, it became even easier to bring Signing Time on the road with us whenever we went on trips. The familiarity was so comforting to our babies. During long road trips, we would play music from Signing Time to calm down a tantrum, and it worked like magic.
- You need to sign throughout the day. Make signing a part of your normal speech; as if you are someone who talks with their hands a lot. I have found this to be especially useful during mealtime. I would show them the sign for their favorite food right before I gave it to them. This was super motivating in getting them to ask for more food by name.
You may be wondering when can you start signing to your baby. You can start from the very beginning. Even though newborns cannot see very well, you can use this time to make signing more effortless through practice. You will be a signing pro by the time they are able to sign back.
Another question I frequently get is “when will they sign back”. This all depends on when you start and the individual child. In my experience, 6-9 months old is fairly standard to expect a baby to sign back to you.
Now that we have covered learning how to teach sign language, here is the unexpected benefit of sign language…
I learned greater compassion for parents of children with special needs. And I learned to see children with special needs for the beautiful, unique people that they are. Let me tell you a story, I was touring preschools in the area for my son, and one of them was located near a school for children who were deaf or hearing impaired. Jeremy (my husband) and I were driving through the campus and stopped at a pedestrian walk way. A little girl who was deaf signed something to us and we signed back. I will near forget the way her face lit up. She was beyond happy. Her excitement made me feel happy, but also hurt. She was so happy to feel seen and normal. Her happiness was rooted in the fact that she consistently felt like an outsider. And for that one moment she was speaking a language that was understood by the majority of people around. I knew the moment for her was fleeting.
This motivated me to examine what I was doing to help my children grow up to be people who treated persons with special needs equality. I continued my American Sign Language (ASL) learning, and remembered that this was bigger than just getting my baby to tell me their needs before they could speak. This was about keeping them opened to the world of children with special needs who deserve to be seen, and have caring friends just like everyone else.
I highly encourage everyone to add a little sign language into their lives. Even if you aren’t able to learn 100 or more signs, learning the basics is good as well. Leave a comment below if you have learned about ASL before and tell us your thoughts.
