Sign Language 101
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Back in graduate school, I became really interested in the idea of teaching hearing babies sign language. In fact, I was so interested that I did a huge research paper on the topic. At that time the research was just beginning to be published and it was all looking very promising. Since that time, additional studies have been published with very positive results: Teaching hearing babies and toddlers sign language was providing positive outcomes in their speech, language, and communication skills!
Fast forward to when I had my daughter almost 4 years ago (I cannot believe it’s been almost four years!), and I was determined to use sign with her. I did and she had many signs she used until she started speaking. But it was when I began signing to my son that I realized just how valuable sign language can be for little ones that may not not be the most advanced talkers. You see, my son is not much of a talker at 20 months. He has definitely finally hit a little “explosion” but I am not kidding when I say signing saved us. It gave my little guy a reliable way to communicate! You can read more here in my post Thank Goodness we are Signing.
But why sign to your infant or toddler? Won’t it delay their speech? How do you even start? How can you learn sign language? My series on signing should answer all these questions and more!
9 Reasons to teach Sign Language to Your Hearing Infant or Toddler
Baby Sign Language: When to Start
Baby Sign: Why I Recommend Using American Sign Language
How YOU Can Learn American Sign Language
Baby Sign: What Signs to Start With
How to Pick the Signs to Teach Your Children
How to Teach Your Little Ones Sign Language
How We are Learning Sign Language
Sign Language: Weaving it Into Daily Activities
Brown Bear Brown Bear and Signing
12 Responses to Sign Language 101
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Welcome! I'm Katie- a mama to two littles and a pediatric speech language pathologist. You'll find all kinds of goodies here about speech and language development and tips to help expand speech and language skills in children! I hope you enjoy your stay and learn a little along the way. Popular Topics
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Signing does go a long way. When my nephew was two years old he barely spoke. After enrolling him for some baby signing classes at SignShine for over a year, his communication skills greatly improved. His vocabulary expanded and he speaks in full phrases. It took a while for him to learn, but once he did he shined!
Cristal welcome! Thanks for sharing your nephew’s story..I love hearing this!
I am a new mommy to an amazing (hearing) 19 month old son. I, like you, have always been interested in signing to hearing children and I am so thankful that I did. My son says a few things but very little compared to the “normal” toddler. We communicate wonderfully with sign language and as a nurse recommend it to all my patients. We recently took a trip across country and everyone on the plane remarked about how well behaved my son was and how great it was that we could communicate with each other. We have yet to have a temper tantrum and I firmly believe it is because he can communicate with me through signing. We have even started the potty training process because he can sign “dirty diaper”. I am a huge advocate for signing to hearing children and I love your site and appreciate that others in the medical community are an advocate for sign language.
Shanen welcome! I love hearing these success stories. Keep advocating!
I used to teach a baby sign language class through the parks and recs. Even though it was only $30 for 4 classes, I had to stop after a few terms because of lack of enrollment. It was so sad.
CC recently posted..Conference scheduling disaster. Again.
Dear Katie,
I’ve just stumbled upon your blog while looking for preschool fall craft ideas (namely the finger puppets for 5 Little Pumpkins), and I’m absolutely fanatical about it! I’m an English native speaker “teaching” English in nursery schools in Germany through play. This is truly a treasure chest of resources and inspirations. (Can’t wait to use your spider web activity and the leaf-sorting activity.) Thanks, too, for posting book recommendations. These are exactly the sort of books I’ve been looking for but couldn’t find.
But I’m also the mother of a 26 month-old deaf boy who’s had cochlear implants for about 13 months. I was a bit suprised but extremely happy that an SLP would be such an advocate of signing for hearing babies. Against the advice of several professionals and pretty much every other parent of a CI kid we’ve encountered here, we’ve been signing since nearly the beginning, although we knew we’d have him implanted and wanted him to aquire spoken language . It just made perfect sense to us, for the same reasons you give for signing with hearing babies. As his speech is very delayed, I can only echo your words when you wrote that signing saved you and your son. I don’t want to imagine how our relationship with our son would suffer if we couldn’t sign. For one thing, when he’s tired or cranky, he pulls off his sound processors and just wants his silence. Also, as most of his consonants are still missing or unclear, a lot of his words sound the same: “Bagger” (the German word for digger/excavator) and “Papa” ( daddy) sound like “baba”. “Thomas” (as in the tank engine), and “cow milk” sound exactly the same. Without signing, there’d be so much more frustration for all of us. The best part of signing, however, was that when he was a baby of about 9 months — and totally fixated on things that moved in the wind — he could initiate a conversation with me by pointing out to me, in all his excitement, a flag. Soon after that, he started pointing out every dog we saw on our walks. Before other babies can say, “woof, woof”, he was able to share with me something he found very exciting, and I was then able to react just as excitedly. Very good for our bond! Incidentally, the most useful sign he’s learned is “help me”. Imagine the screaming and stomping we’d have to deal with if he couldn’t just ask for help when he needs it.
My husband speaks German with him, and I speak English, and we both support our speech with the signs of DGS (German Sign Language) b/c this is the country where we plan to remain for the foreseeable future. Using one sign for both spoken languages also proved to be a great anchor for him in the acquisition. We always speak aloud when we sign, and our son does, too.
I do have a question for you. When would you say it’s time to take him for speech therapy? His hearing age is only 13 months, and our rehab clinic says that they wouldn’t start offering speech therapy before a child has a hearing age of 2 years. I don’t want him to fall far behind. But I also don’t want to be an overbearing mom.
Thanks for the terrific blog!
Stephanie, first of all, welcome! I have to applaud YOU for going against the “grain” and providing your child with LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION despite the fact that he could not hear. Speech and Language are NOT the same and you do not need speech to communicate. You have provided your child with a VOICE that he may not have had for so long.
As far as speech therapy, I’ll be honest that I am no expert on Cochlear implants however I thought speech therapy started immediately. Is he not in any therapy after getting his implants?
Katie, yes, I should have clarified that he does go about once a month into the clinic for play therapy. The focus there is in hearing, and learning to discriminate sounds. (For example, a recording of a rooster is played. He has to choose a flash card of a rooster out of ten or so animals, ‘drive’ it with a scooter over to a clothesline and hang it up on the line.) The therapist is a social pedagog with a specialty in hearing loss/impairment (whatever the PC term in the US currently is). And he has an early intervention specialist who comes to us once a week. She is also not a speech therapist. Now that he’s implanted, the focus is more on making noises. But much of her work, particularly in the beginning, is on establishing two-way communication through turn-taking activities, etc. So, he’s not yet working with anyone who really has studied voice production or motor skills.
For about ten months, our son was stuck only being able to say B and M as his consonants. (Vowels, intonation, repeating rythym were all no problem.) then he started using G as a substitute fo some consonants (but strangely not for G itself) and N sometimes in context at hearing age 11 months. And now he sometimes babbles Ds and Ts. But he hasn’t used them in context yet. I guess it’s encouraging that he’s babbling them. We know, then, that his mouth is capable of forming the sounds.
Thanks for your reply!
Hi Katie,
I came across your post while researching normal speech development for my soon to be 18 month old girl. Basically i have been using signs with her from about 5 months old and only when she was 15 months did she show much interest in them and now she signs for everything. Which in a way has been fantastic as it has helped so much in how much she communicates and i can finally understand what her interests are and what she wants. However her speech has been quite slow she can say maybe 7 words or so not including ‘wa wa’ for water and ‘ba ba’ for bath. i should point out her receptive language is excellent she can follow simple commands occasionally two step commands, understands most of what i say, and can point to different body parts. Basically her development in every other area appears to be quite normal however we saw her pediatrician today who suggested that perhaps i hold off the signing and just encourage her to use words, which i really didn’t like as i feel that if she could say the words she would especially considering she defiantly understands what a lot of the words are. i just feel that taking away her main source of communicating would just leave her more frustrated and upset. i guess i was just wondering in your opinion should i be concerned with how much she is speaking and do you think i should keep using signs with her as part of me wonders if she is choosing to sign over speaking. or am i just being silly. Thanks any advice would be appreciated.
Hi Crystal! First of all, welcome! Let’s see..Wa wa and ba ba are both real words, as wrong as they have meaning, so if she has around 10 words, that is not terrible. My own son only had around 10 words at 10 months but now at 22 months has over 100. I do not agree that you should take away signing. You can encourage words AND use sign together, it does not have to be one or the other. Assuming everything else is normal in her development, I would continue with signs BUT also work on encouraging her to use words as well. I assume when you are signing you are pairing the word along with the sign? I’d continue to do this but gently encourage her to SAY some words. This is what i did with my own son at 18 months. I allowed his signs to continue to “work” to get his needs met, but I backed off teaching new ones and encouraged speech.
I hope that helps. This of course, does not replace an assessment from a qualified SLP. I can only provide a recommendation from what you tell me. Good luck!
love, love, love this series. I am going to pin the whole thing!
Thanks Carolyn! SO happy to hear you are loving it!!