Apr 30 2002
What's Your Sign?
Several months ago, I discovered an intriguing book called Baby Signs. Its premise is that babies benefit from using signs, especially during the period when they can say only a few words but understand many, many more. Signs empower them to communicate with others from an earlier age and about a greater variety of topics. Being able to communicate desires, fears and thoughts bolsters their self-esteem and reduces their frustration at not being understood. In fact, babies who are brought up using baby signs consistently out perform their non-signing peers on IQ tests well into elementary school.
The signs discussed in this book are not part of the American Sign Language. Instead, they?re more of an ad-hoc group of signs, some of which are made up by the baby. These signs typically mimic the object or action to which the baby wants to call attention. Other signs used in this system are conventional ones such as waving ?bye bye,? nodding for ?yes? and shaking your head for ?no.?
The book recommends initially focusing on teaching your baby the signs for ?hat,? ?fish,? ?flower,? ?bird? and ?more.? We?ve chosen to focus on others because they?re easier for us to work into our daily routine and they?re things we regularly encounter. We are teaching Sam the signs for ?kitty? (stroking one arm as if petting a cat), ?eat? (tapping fingers to our lips), ?all gone? (we wave our hands back and forth with our palms facing downward), ?look? (pointing at something) and, of course, ?bye bye.?
To reinforce what we?re teaching him and to expose him to more signs, we play the Baby Signs video for Sam. Throughout the video, pictures of actions or objects alternate with footage of children making the corresponding signs and saying the appropriate words. The video fascinates Sam. He hardly pays attention to the movies Robert & I rent for ourselves, but once we put this one on, he?s spellbound.
The effort we have put into this is starting to pay off. Just the other night, we sat down with Sam to watch the video. We were dumbstruck when he started mimicking the children as they made the sign for ?bird.? Each time they flapped their arms up and down, so did he. It was astonishing! He may not associate the action with birds yet, but that?s not far off. All these weeks and weeks of signing at him and pronouncing the words slowly and clearly have not been wasted effort. He?s absorbing a great deal of what we show him. We have had our doubts about all this?were we just jumping on another bandwagon that ultimately goes nowhere?or were we really doing something good? This recent experience just goes to show that babies are a lot smarter than we give them credit for and any attempt to provide them with new information and new ways of engaging with their world can?t be all that bad.
