Literacy and The Baby Signs® Program

A recent article published, Read All About It: Linking the Baby Signs® Program and Literacy Development

by Linda Acredolo, Ph.D. and Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D. Co-founders, Baby Signs, Inc. touched on a topic that people ask me about all the time. Will signing help or hurt babies literacy later? Read the following short passage for the short answer, or email me and I'd be happy to send you a copy of the whole article.

Knowing lots of words helps children comprehend what is read, guess at words that are difficult to decode, explain problems they are having, and understand explanations and instructions teachers provide.

And how does the Baby Signs® program help? Our NIH-supported research showed that infants exposed to signs during infancy had better receptive and expressivelanguage vocabularies by the time they were two and three years old. In fact, the infants who learned to use signs as infants had verbal IQ scores that remained high well into the elementary school years.

When it rains it pours!!

All of a sudden at 13 months my daughter is using a few more signs! It's like something clicked and it all fell into place! She has added EAT, MORE, HAT, and SLEEP to her vocabulary in just the last week or so. I have been showing her the "My Fun Signs" video made by Baby Signs and she began copying the kids in the video. Soon after that, she began applying the signs to our daily life! Just tonight at dinner she signed SLEEP when she was finished eating. Paired with some yawning and eye rubs it was her way of telling me she was really tired and ready for her tubby and to get to bed. It was so nice to know how she was feeling, I felt very connected to her, it was amazing! I love a good chat over dinner.

Potty talk

For those of you that have kids, you know that after you have a baby you can forget about ever going to the bathroom alone again. For those you who don't have kids, or don't have kids yet, this may fall under the TMI category. Either way, consider this your warning that I'm about to use some potty talk.

Since my daughter was old enough to pay attention to where I take her around the house, I have been narrating our adventures. One of her favorite trips is to the potty. I think it's a mix of looking and smiling at herself in the mirror and mommy saying "Mommy go potty" with lots of excitement. (I'm about 8 months pregnant, so this happens quite often during our day)

Each time I say the words "Mommy go potty" I also do the sign for POTTY. (The sign for POTTY is the ASL letter T shaken slightly left to right) A few days ago, as I said and signed my potty mantra, I looked over and my little signer was signing it with me! So, now when she gets that strained look on her face and I know she is in fact going potty herself I sign POTTY and say "Tori go potty". She is only a year old at the moment, but by assigning a word and sign to this action, I hope to eventually make the transition to potty training that much easier.

There has been an added bonus to this lesson as well. Being a year old, she is also experiencing a bit of separation anxiety. So, if there is another person in the house (Daddy, Grandma, Deb Deb the babysitter, etc) I can let her know when I leave the room that "Mommy go potty" and to her that means I'll be right back. It works to an extent right now, but after a while I'm hoping it will help her understand the difference between leaving the room and leaving the house. When I see her sign POTTY I know that she understands, and to me that is comforting.

ALL-DONE!!

One of the milestones a Baby Signer will reach is learning how to apply their sign vocabulary to different scenarios. My little signer has mastered the sign for ALL-DONE in her high chair and has been using it for months already to tell me when she is full and ready to get out of her chair, but I was so proud of her when she took that sign and applied it to another appropriate situation. After taking care of her business, um hmm, she walked right up to me and signed ALL-DONE! She wanted to let me know it was time for a diaper change and she was so proud of herself for telling me. She has also used this sign to end tubby time and when her favorite cartoon has come to an end.

The best way to make this transition is to take the lead and model the behavior. When you see that your little signer has really begun to understand a sign like ALL-DONE, just begin speaking it and signing it in new situations. After a poop is only one of the options, there are several others that work as well. Every family will have their own opportunities. For example, you can model the sign after a favorite video, after a bottle or sippy cup is empty, or when you are ready to end tubby time. Using the sign will help facilitate communication between you and your baby and ease that frustration a baby may feel when they are not understood. Now that's worth a try!

Lip Smacking Good!!

Could Baby Signing get any cuter?? YES! I've been modeling the signs for FOOD, EAT, MILK and DRINK for some time now and I can tell that my daughter can recognize them. However, she has decided to make up one sign for everything that goes in her tummy and leaves it to me to figure it out for now. She likes to make a lip-smacking/bottle sucking movement/sound to let me know that her belly needs filling. It usually means that she wants a bottle, but she has figured out that it can transfer to food as well. If I sign MILK, she responds with the lip smacking and comes to me which leads me to believe she understands what I'm signing to her. It's nice to be getting a response when I communicate with her. I really believe I am avoiding a lot of the frustration Moms experience related to communication.

Daddy's Girl

Is there a reason babies tend to say Daddy before Mommy? Isn't it the Mommy who slaves away, day and night, changing diapers and cleaning up everything you can imagine? Then, Daddy comes home and baby looks up and plainly says, "Daddy!" My little one doesn't even say Da-Da, she plainly says, "Dad-EEEEE". She is still using signs for things like ALL-DONE after she is finished eating, but a word like DADDY came out spoken and not signed. So, this leads me to believe things from my experience so far with using Baby Signs with my daughter:

1. Some words come out signed and some words come out spoken.

2. Signing with my baby has not shown to impede her ability to acquire spoken language.

So far using Baby Signs has been successful and adorable! What more could I ask for?

You say GOODBYE, I say HELLO

For a few weeks now, my daughter has learned that when you say HELLO, if she waves at you she gets extra giggles and tons of positive attention. So, every time she sees a new person she waves HELLO! Then sometimes, she continues to wave throughout playtime and again to say GOODBYE. What can I say, she loves to be the center of attention!

Oh no!

Shaking your head to say no is a woman's birth right, no? Yes! Well, my almost 8 month old daughter has already begun exercising that right quite often. She applies it to several different situations at this point, so I'm starting to really believe that she understands the meaning behind it. She says NO when she is full and does not want any more to eat for example. At first she was using the sign for ALL-DONE and she has now decided to use her latest sign, NO! Now all I have to do is get her to say YES once in a while. Sigh....

Mabbling

Mabbling: Manual babbling done by a baby learning sign language. My daughter is 6 months old and has officially started Mabbling. She learns a hand movement and sometimes uses it properly to attach meaning, but most of the time just plays with the hand shapes. Watching her eyes as she watched her own hands is priceless. She has such wonderful manual dexterity so early, that she has now figured out how to undo her own diaper. The problem is that she knows she is doing something naughty and smiles from ear to ear when she get it undone. So, you take the good with the bad. :)

Get with The Program!

Talk With Your Baby . . . Before Your Baby Learns to Talk! Have you ever wondered what your baby is thinking? Or why your baby is crying? The Baby Signs® Program teaches babies to use simple, easy-to-do gestures for communicating with their parents and caregivers. These gestures or “signs” represent an item or concept, like “cat,” “eat,” or “all gone.” Using signs gives babies a way to "talk" with their parents, before they can talk. Babies can communicate about the world around them, long before they have mastered their verbal speaking skills! Babies and toddlers often use signs as a natural part of the communication process. Many babies know how to wave "bye-bye" or use a headshake to mean "no." The Baby Signs® Program can help your baby use lots of other gestures to communicate just as easily as these more common "signs."

About the Baby Signs® Program The Baby Signs® Program helps children develop both language and cognitive skills. Studies show that babies who sign actually develop speech sooner and have larger vocabularies when they do start talking. The Baby Signs® Program is based on the groundbreaking research which began an international movement to teach hearing babies to use signs. After 20 years of careful study, researchers proved that using signs actually enhances language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Clickhere to read more about this exciting research. The Baby Signs Institute offers parent workshops and classes to teach parents how to use the Baby Signs® Program at home. To find out more about classes and products, please look through our website or send us an email with your questions. You can also visit the official Baby Signs® Benefitspage for more information about the program.

Where do I start?

Five Signs Babies Love

Love Flower Mommy Daddy Thank You

Doctor's orders: Believe in the research!

Dr. Acredolo, the author and co-founder of The Baby Signs Program, recently shared the following information with her family of Independent Certified Instructors, and I thought it was worth sharing here.  If you have ever wondered about the research base of the program, here is even more proof of the validity of teaching babies to use sign language and gesturing.....    There is an exciting new study that appeared in this month's prestigious journal, Science.  In the study, conducted at the University of Chicago, researchers found that gesturing by parents and their babies at 14 months was significantly predictive of better verbal vocabulary at 54 months.  The study revealed that middle-class moms and babies engaged in significantly more gesturing than those from low-income families. The researchers end with the suggestion that encouraging gesturing may be a way to help close the achievement gap between low- and middle-income children.   Instead of signing, the researchers' focus was on a cognitively simpler form of non-verbal communication--pointing. Although they were not looking at signing per se, their findings have clear relevance to our work.  Here are just some of the ways that their findings apply to us:   Parents who model signs also, almost automatically, point to the object.  In fact, the "10 Steps to Success" on our Quick Reference Guide includes advice to do so as tip #4.   Babies also often point at an object when they sign.   Signing increases a child's tendency to watch his/her parent's hands, thereby increasing the chance the child will notice the parent's pointing and recognize its relevance.    The authors are interpreting pointing as conveying meaning ("e.g., pointing at a dog = dog").  Signs are even more sophisticated ways of conveying meaning and, therefore, even more closely linked to learning words. In fact, the authors seem to be, pardon the pun, "taking the words right out of our mouths" when they suggest that "Gesture could also play a more direct role in word learning by giving children an opportunity to practice generating particular meanings by hand, at a time when those meanings are difficult to produce by mouth. "   They suggest that the positive relationship to verbal development may in part be due to the fact that parents respond to points with appropriate words and, since the child has chosen the topic, the child is more likely to listen and learn.  Well, as we all know, the same can be said of signing--in spades!    In other words, the results of this study clearly support our contention that encouraging families to use signs is an easy and effective way to help foster verbal language development.  And we're not the only ones to think so!  Check out what Ann Pleshette Murphy had to say on Good Morning America: It's No Charade: Baby Gestures Could Help Speaking.   And, for those of you who have to deal with those who argue that any non-ASL signing is harmful to children, this study, showing as it does have a positive relationship between pointing and verbal development, provides a perfect counter-argument.

Hello Hello!

Hello!! That is what my daughter would sign to you if you saw her out and about these days. This past Sunday we went out for brunch and I heard the people behind us giggling and talking about a little baby who was waving HELLO to them. It took me a moment until I realized it was MY baby doing the waving! This was her first time using this sign without being asked. It was very exciting, not to mention pretty cute. I must have given her some serious positive feedback because she hasn't stopped signing it since. She says HELLO to me when I come to get her from her crib, to herself in the mirror, everytime she gets the chance! I don't know who is prouder of her, me or herself.

Waving HELLO is a very normal skill for most babies hearing and deaf, signing and non-signing. If you have been waiting for the right time to begin teaching Baby Signs (although it's never too early) waving HELLO is a signal that your baby is ready to begin. Using positive reinforcement everytime the baby waves HELLO will encourage them to keep uising it. Simply introduce a new sign or few signs at this point and use the same encouragement even if they simply mimick your hands. There is nothing better than pleasing Mommy and Daddy, so they will want to use the gestures all the time if they get rewarded with a smile, cuddles and a little excitement.

Talk With Your Baby . . . Before Your Baby Learns to Talk! Have you ever wondered what your baby is thinking? Or why your baby is crying? The Baby Signs® Program teaches babies to use simple, easy-to-do gestures for communicating with their parents and caregivers. These gestures or “signs” represent an item or concept, like “cat,” “eat,” or “all gone.” Using signs gives babies a way to "talk" with their parents, before they can talk. Babies can communicate about the world around them, long before they have mastered their verbal speaking skills! Babies and toddlers often use signs as a natural part of the communication process. Many babies know how to wave "bye-bye" or use a headshake to mean "no." The Baby Signs® Program can help your baby use lots of other gestures to communicate just as easily as these more common "signs."

Benefits

The Benefits of Baby Signs®

Families who use the Baby Signs® Program know first hand that there are many benefits to using signs with their babies. Using the Baby Signs® Program … Reduces tears, tantrums, & frustration Allows babies to share their worlds Increases respect for babies Strengthens the parent-infant bond Boosts self-esteem and self-confidence Makes learning to talk easier Stimulates intellectual development Over two decades of Baby Signs® research has shown that these proven benefits affect different areas of a child’s development. Using the Baby Signs® Program stimulates: Social-Emotional Development Language Development Cognitive Development

Kleenex? Does anyone have a kleenex?

Let the teething side effects begin! My daughter has started drooling and producing boogers at an alarming rate! I undertand this is all side effects from the process of teething, but it's still a mess! My first instinct was that she had a cold when I saw all of this pouring out of her.

So, now is the time where I tell you that I wish she had a sign to use to tell me the difference between 2 things. I would like to be able to use the sign for PAIN or HURT. I wish she was able to tell me if her teeth are hurting her so that I can put some Infant Oragel on there to ease her suffering. But, what I would like even more is to begin the process of introducing the sign for OR. In this regard I am deviating a bit from The Baby Signs Program, and probably getting way ahead of myself. But, in order for her to begin the language learning process, she has to see the language happening in front of her consistently. So, as if I have become a human scale and my 2 hands hold the objects to be weighed, I will sign HURT near her mouth as I turn slightly to the left, and the turn slightly to the right and sign HURT again but this time near my nose. This poses the question.....does your nose hurt or do your teeth hurt? Her response would only need to be a pointed finger at her nose or her teeth, so she may respond to this type of question sooner than you would think. This question uses a slight body shift to differentiate between 2 things. This is a technique used when using American Sign Language.

So, for now, it's still a guessing game. I will continue signing to her consistently and patiently await my response. She is coming up on the 6 month mark which is where some deaf children begin to "babble" in sign language when they are raised in a deaf environment. That means American Sign Language is used in the home as the primary form of communication. My daughter may be a bit behind that rate of advancement, but I have faith in her! My little signing superstar has a lot to say, I'm sure of it.

Very funny Tooth Fairy

Here we are almost 1 month and 2 teeth later. We took my daughter down to Florida for a couple weeks and while we were there she cut her first tooth! Even though it's a bit on the early side, it was exciting to see the cute little white line popping through. It wasn't so cute for my husband when she bit his little exploring finger. That'll teach him! And now, just a couple days ago while I was admiring the said new tooth, I noticed another little white line right next to it. Once again I found myself wishing she could have told me that her poor litte gums were sore. I would have bought the teething toys and stuck them in the freezer much sooner.
Soon I will introduce a new sign for times like this. It will be the sign "PAIN" or "HURT". This sign is done by putting your 2 index fingers together in front of the place on your body where you feel the pain (think ET). If the sign is done in a neutral area in front of the body it just means pain in general. This is useful when asking things like, "PAIN WHERE?" WHERE is produced by taking the right index finger and placing it where you would say "number 1" and moving it back and forth.
If my daughter had known the sign for PAIN, she could've told me why she was being fussy and waking up every night while I was on vacation. Nice timing Tooth Fairy, very funny.

ALL DONE, and just getting started!

We are 2 weeks into food now, and she is really getting the hang of it. This morning, I was having tea and a muffin quickly before I fixed "breakfast" for my daughter (she had already had one feeding before that, I was not being a mean mommy). I looked over at her after I took my first bite and she was making chewing motions with her cute little mouth. I dropped everything and fixed her some rice cereal with apple. As I put her in her highchair she smiled wide and kept making the chewing motion with her mouth! I feel like we had our first conversation and I am calling that her first "word/gesture". She is not even 5 months old, yet I believe she was both mimicking my face and trying to tell me she was hungry. This is a child who only cries when something is truly wrong, so maybe she is finding other ways to make herself heard!

So, after seeing her performance this morning, I decided even though it will be a while until I truly see her signing back to me, it's time to introduce one more sign. So, when we were done with our cereal, muffin and tea and before I took her out of her highchair, I signed "ALL-DONE" and I will continue to do that. I will not only sign it after we eat, but after a movie, after playtime, after a bottle, and on and on. That is how baby signers learn to apply their signs to different scenarios.

Just as we continue to use our entire English vocabulary when speaking to our children, a baby learning sign language should be exposed to the full vocabulary of sign language. As for how it applies to baby signers only wishing to use some of the language, you can always feel free to begin using signs as early as you like. It's the way you reinforce those signs that shape the learning process.

First cold

Well, my daughter got her first cold over the weekend. What a sad state she is in. Can't blow her nose properly, can't take meds, just has to stick it out and get lots of hugs from mommy and daddy. This is one of those times when I wish she could already use signs to tell me what's wrong. She has been fussy all day, and all I can do is guess that it's due to the discomfort of having a cold. So, until she is abe to begin using signs such as "HURT" and "MOMMY" I'll have to guess whether her crying is trying to tell me she is in pain, or that she just wants another hug. It's times like this that a new mommy adds to the list of words she wants to teach her baby!

Time for FOOD!

We started our daughter on cereal this past week and after a few days she is starting to really enjoy it. This is the perfect time to introduce a new sign! Every time we sit down to eat I make sure and use the sign "EAT". She is not big enough to sit in the high chair yet, although that will be the next big introduction for her, so we use a small chair called a BUMBO. If you've never seen one, check them out. They are fantastic for helping little ones learn to sit up and it is coming in very handy now that we are beginning to feed her with a spoon. You can buy an attachable tray to go on the front of it which is coming in very handy lately. The other thing I really like about BUMBO is that it frees up my hands to sign to her. So, she is getting to practice sitting up and watching mommy's hands at eye level. When it is dinner time, I always put some music on, sit her in the BUMBO, and begin signing "EAT" with a very enthusiastic look on my face. She gets very excited! Soon we will move on to oatmeal from rice cereal, big things happening in my house these days!

Talk to me, baby!

Today is my daughter's 4 month birthday! (I promise to stop doing that at 6 months) Over the past 2 weeks she has started waking around 1:30am for a feeding. Before that, she was sleeping between 9-12 hours a night without waking at all. All of a sudden she is starving in the middle of the night and I'm not sure what changed. It's times like this that I wish I could talk to her about how she is feeling. I can't wait until she is able to start signing even the most basic of words so I can figure out what she is thinking. Even if she could sign "MOMMY", "FOOD", or "DIAPER" I could better care for her needs. As for now, it's still a guessing game in my tired haze in the middle of the night. I'll continue to wander down the stairs to feed, change, and comfort my daughter and wait for the day that she can let me know exactly what she needs, or at least point me in the right direction.

Yes, gestures do count!

Today I took my daughter to a play group. We had a great time catching up with friends and sharing mommy stories. Baby Signs always seems to be a topic of conversation when I'm around, but I do enjoy talking about it. Some of the mommies were talking about a few gestures that their babies were already starting to make. It was a great opportunity to let them know that any kind of gestures is a great sign that your baby is ready to start learning more gestures and signs!
Babies and toddlers often use signs as a natural part of the communication process. Many babies know how to wave "bye-bye" or use a headshake to mean "no." The Baby Signs® Program can help your baby use lots of other gestures to communicate just as easily as these more common "signs." The Baby Signs® Program teaches babies to use simple, easy-to-do gestures for communicating. These gestures or “signs” represent an item or concept, like “cat,” “eat,” or “all gone.” It's that easy, really.

Found my hands Mom!

So, I'm a new mom. My daughter is 3 and 1/2 months old and I've been signing with her since the beginning. There came a point a few weeks ago that I noticed her watching my hands. My husband and I are currently having a MOMMY/DADDY war to see which word/sign she will say/sign first. It seems every time I sign MOMMY my husband is standing behind me signing DADDY. Anyway, getting back to the point, she has become interested in what I'm doing with my hands. And, although she is still a few months from signing, the important thing is that she is showing interest.

Today was a good day. After she watched my hands moving around for a while, I saw her look down at her hand and move it to her face. At one point her hand became hidden behind a blanket and she was surprised to see the blanket move when she was trying to find her hand. These are all the beginnings of a Baby Signer! How exciting it is to finally be seeing this all happen with my own little one.

Milestones

Milestones cannot be measured with distance nor rocks. Every baby and every mommy has a different way of measuring success. The Baby Signs® Program experience will be different for every family. One of the most interesting parts of working with families is seeing the many different goals people set for themselves. I've worked with teen moms who are struggling with finding ways to connect to their babies and find The Baby Signs® Program to be an easy way to interact in a fun, non-threatening way. There are no theories to read about, no regimented plan to follow.
You know you're using the program correctly if it feels like game and brings smiles and laughter to you and your baby. Just like any game, learn a few rules (signs) and enjoy the ride. They watch their babies begin to take the baby steps to success. You'll remember the first time your baby watches your hands with a new found curiosity. You'll remember the first day your baby deliberately moves their hand into position to respond with a sign. You'll especially remember the day that tears and frustration were avoided because your baby was able to guide you in the right direction when trying to problem solve. Ahhhh..... the priceless feeling of being able to really interact and communicate with your baby before your baby can talk. It's not about reaching a milestone, being the first to sign, or even being the best signer. It's about connecting with your baby. Finding that common language and being able to reach one another is something some people cannot achieve in a lifetime.

The Baby Signs® Program