Teaching your child to sign before they are able to speak has become a wide sweeping trend across the nation. Celebrities have picked up the cue and are taking the time to invest in their children far beyond the trendy accessories and fads that usually hallmark their social groups. In fact, it may well be one of the healthiest new movements in early childhood development - teaching baby sign language
Our own experience with toddler sign language has been tremendous - we were introduced to the world of baby signing through the arrival of our fourth son who was born with severe hearing loss. Wanting to get ahead of the curve, we invested the time to teach our other three children (all aged 6 or under) American Sign Language before our fourth was old enough to begin learning. The transformation that we saw in our family was much more profound than we had anticipated!
The largest impact was in our two year old; he has taken to signing like a fish to water! Where before he had great difficulty in expressing his needs (leaving us to try and interpret his frustrated vocalizations) within a week he was clearly signing his desires for water, juice, more, all done, hurt, and tired just to name a few. It is clear that his capacity for language and communication far exceeds his physical ability to form the words necessary to get his point across. Signing has been the doorway into that world where he can finally talk to us using sing language for children!
His actual spoken language development has increased as well - using and exercising the concept construction and communicating that through sequential signing has expanded his ability to build sentences with the few words he does know. This is perhaps the greatest benefit - asl for children has not only helped him communicate with us here and now, his capacity for building language is beginning much earlier and will only be a help to him in the coming years.
Sign Language is not just for the hearing impaired but can help just about anyone. It is beneficial to children with disabilities or behavioral problems. ASL can also benefit children who are completely normal from the time they are babies. Being able to understand your baby creates a new bond between parents and children. ASL also can help your child speak sooner and communicate better with others. Learning sign language can be a benefit not only to your family but to everyone around you. Teaching sign language for children has so many benefits that helping others, that can't hear, is just an added plus.
Here's a great tool to help teach your children:
Signing Time Video Review
