Baby Sign Language

[lucyann23]

Hello,

My name is Lucy, I'm a final year English Language student at Newcastle University.

I'm writing my final essay on Baby Sign (or other programs like it such as 'Your Baby can Read') and was wondering if any mums have done or are doing any of these programs that claim to improve your child's intelligence/ability to read/language development?

If so, has it been successful? Unsuccessful? What are your general feelings about things like this? Also, are there any parents of deaf and hearing children who have noticed any differences in development through the use o sign language? And anything thing else you might have to say!

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks!

NB. Any comments posted on this thread will form part of research data for my final university essay. All names/usernames will remain anonymous. Data collected from this thread will be able to be read by the essay markers at Newcastle University. If you wish to opt out of the thread, please feel free to delete your comment at any time.

The aim of collecting the data is to gage the response from parents who have used baby sign with their own infants and compare this with academic work to assess the validity of the claims made by baby sign proponents.

Thank you for all your comments.

I used a baby sign language book with my son when he was a baby, but I didn't go to any classes, just started using a few signs for things that we did every day i.e. drink, eat, all finished, bath, mummy, daddy etc. I started signing to him at about 5 months as the book said that the earlier you start the better, but he was too young to sign back and I got fed up after a couple of weeks and stopped doing it. I then started again when he was about 10 months old and he did his first sign back to me after only a few days so that encouraged me to keep going. I did it simply to help with communication - not because of any effect it might have on his language skills.

He eventually learned lots and lots of signs and I definitely think it helped with his behaviour - I think it helped him to keep calm as he could communicate with me (although obviously he couldn't communicate everything that he wanted to so there were still some tantrums!). We signed every day until he started to talk.

Most of my other friends' children started to talk earlier than my son and I did worry briefly that he wasn't talking because he could sign and therefore didn't need to and was concerned that perhaps I had done the wrong thing by signing. However, when he did start to talk he went from saying just a couple of words to talking in full sentences in just a couple of weeks, so really quickly I think. He is now 2 1/2 and people often comment on how advanced his language seems for his age - he has a very wide vocabulary and always talks in sentences etc. As soon as he could talk he stopped using all the signs and now if I asked him what the sign was for something he would not be able to tell me!

I have no idea though whether or not the signing has had anything to do with his language development - perhaps it helped as he could communicate before he could talk so had more practice...but who knows? He also loves books and we read together several times every day and have since he was just a few weeks old, plus I talk to him all the time, so perhaps that is something to do with it too.

In short, I would say that I think the sign language was very useful for the few months when he could sign to me but couldn't talk and I think it had a positive effect on his behaviour during those months, but I don't know whether or not it has had any effect on his language skills over all. Hope that is useful!