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