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| Based on Real Live Science!! |
The best book I've found on teaching babies sign focuses on teaching parents to cultivate learning moments, embroidering jointly sustained focus -- a parenting strategy shown in unrelated research to accelerate language acquisition, even when no signs are used at all. If you read one book about signing with infants, I recommend Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers by PhD'd moms Michelle Anthony and Reyna Lindert.
The rationale and methodology for using
gestural language with preverbal infants are simple; the
influence doing so has on cognitive development is so complex it
defies scientific description (but then so do most functions
of the mind and most other things it's hard to make money from). The rationale is both physiological and intuitive:
babies have the motor coordination to intentionally gesture long
before their articulatory tracts and neural development can create
speech, so babies can express themselves and begin learning younger
when they're taught a formal gestural code. If a baby can wave
bye-bye, the baby can sign; teaching a baby to sign is as easy (and
natural) as teaching a baby to blow kisses, it just makes the most of
the nonverbal communication parents have always relied upon for
solving problems with infants (albeit often unconsciously). By
bringing the power of intentionality to the body as a medium of
ideas, parents who teach infants sign language allow babies to
identify needs or interests, to have a modicum of control over their
lives, and the connection created by understanding usually lessens
toddler frustration.
The methodology is basically to do
exactly the same thing as when you wave bye-bye – to pair a gesture
with an event (and a spoken word) repeatedly, and to respond with
joyous encouragement to a baby's every effort at participation.
Ideas abound for how to do this in effective ways, but there are
several basic guidelines.
- When to start: Signing can begin as early as parents want to start practicing but a baby will not sign back until they have the motor control to imitate hand and arm movements, usually around 7 months old. (With Amelie we began signing 'more' and 'milk' at about 5 months, though she did not produce signs herself until late, around 9 or 10 months old; I intend to start with Bodhi in a focused way at about 4 months, in the hopes that using specific teaching strategies will encourage her to produce signs earlier than Amelie did.) We expose babies to speech from the minute they are born with no concern for confusing overstimulation, so the only danger of signing early is parental disillusionment if the infant does not return the favor fast enough. A baby over the age of 8 months can be expected to begin signing within 3 or 4 weeks; toddlers a year and older will often start the same day. Interestingly, spoken language systematically blossoms very shortly after 3 or 4 signs have been mastered (Anthony and Lindert). Signing is a well-tested strategy for accelerating language development for children with speech delays.
What to teach first: the consensus is to begin with only a few signs (ranging from 3 to 6) and wait until the baby begins to use them before broadening the vocabulary. Spoken language is presented in a very complex stream, so the idea is to use signs to highlight simple ideas within that stream rather than introducing an entire secondary code requiring interpretation. When used this way, signs are taught for individual words, not couched in an environment of true language (as is American Sign Language, which requires complex syntax); this is why some sources caution against the term “baby sign language” (Brenda Seal, 2010). Some approaches advise balancing useful, parent-motivated signs (like 'more,' 'milk' and 'food' as suggested by Joseph Garcia in the first ASL-based babysign classic Sign with your Baby) with fun, baby-motivating signs (like 'bear', 'dog' and 'ball' as suggested by Anthony and Lindert again). When the baby begins to produce available signs, follow the baby's attention to decide what new signs are called for, and increase the vocabulary in a child-directed progression. Signs can be modified for ease of use (as advised by seminal researchers Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn in Baby Sign) but children will pronounce even 'easy' movements in their own unique ways, so most methodologies now advocate the use of formal ASL signs instead of homemade ones. Using 'real' signs makes it easier to remember what was used, easier to teach new caretakers, and easier to pair speech with simultaneous sign. Many of Acredolo and Goodwyn's suggested modified signs require the use of the mouth in some way, like opening it for hippopotamus or sniffing for flower, which precludes presentation of the word at the same time. I use ASL with Amelie because it's a 2nd language for her; I also sign sometimes without speaking at all for the same reason, against the advice of speech-pathologists, and was surprised to read Joseph Garcia's endorsement of the behavior as a technique to focus a child's mind on the sufficiency of sign to carry meaning.- How to introduce signs: Most simply, just make the gesture when you say the word, as you do with waving bye-bye. More effectively, sign near your face (Garcia) so it is in the baby's line of sight, and do so either right before, during, or after the sign is relevant. (If you're driving through the countryside and sign 'cow' while one whizzes past, the baby may think you're referring to fields or something still visible when she looks out the window.) A fantastic source for tricks about how to capture effective learning moments can be found in Signing Smart (Anthony and Lindert), which gives tips about how to teach signs while reading books together (like to sign directly on the picture) or while holding a baby in your lap (like to sign on the baby's body yourself).
Tons more to come on this topic, but the most important part of all: have fun. The point is joy. We learn better happy; we live better happy. Let me know what works for you!
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