Sign Language

 

Parenting poses many challenges, one of which is trying to figure out what your baby wants—or, more importantly, needs. Some parents eager to communicate with their infants are turning to sign language, where babies use gestures to tell their caregivers what they’re needing or wanting or noticing around them. For our purposes here, when I talk about signing, I don’t mean teaching babies American Sign Language or another codified system, but using sign-like gestures with babies to help them communicate with us.

Competing Opinions

Perspective #1: It’s a powerful gift to offer a baby, to give her tools by which she can tell her caregivers what’s going on in her mind. Long before she has the motor ability to articulate actual words, she can communicate with signs to tell her parents that she hears a train, that she’s in pain or afraid, that she wants a drink or another cracker, or that she sees a picture of a fish. Doing so helps reduce frustration for all. Even without a formal program, children can begin to pick up signs and develop a decent-sized vocabulary around the time they turn one. Then, over the next six months, they can acquire dozens of signs, meaning they can tell their parents things their words can’t communicate yet. This skill can prove especially helpful to kids with developmental or speech delays, and it can help all children improve their cognitive and emotional development.

Perspective #2: While it’s an intriguing idea, baby sign language hasn’t been studied enough to risk possible complications that might come with it. What if it delays speech, as babies come to rely on their signs and choose to sign rather than develop and use words? Also, it’s not realistic for all parents, since teaching baby sign language requires consistent pairing of the sign with the spoken word, which can be hard to do if your child is in daycare or not with you for hours every day. Plus, while using baby sign language may reduce the baby’s frustration at not being able to communicate her needs to her parents, that frustration and confusion will still occur when she attempts to use signs with others.

What the Science Says

SCIENCE IS DEFINITELY inconclusive when it comes to using signs and gestures to communicate with an infant. In a 2000 study, researchers compared two groups of eleven-month-olds, showing that the group that was taught to sign soon became more advanced talkers than the non-trained group. Then, at the age of two, signers showed more proficient verbal skills that were three months ahead of non-signers. At eight years of age, the trained group had IQs twelve points higher than the non-trained group, even though they had stopped signing years earlier. As with any study, we have to look at its specifics, and this one was relatively small, with only 103 infants studied. Still, as the authors pointed out, the evidence at least pointed to the strong possibility “that symbolic gesturing does not hamper verbal development and may even facilitate it.” Other research found that the use of symbols and gestures correlated with the later development of social-emotional strengths. These results fell in line with the efforts of speech and language therapists, who for decades have been using different versions of sign language with infants who have speech and/or cognitive impairments.

However, in 2005, a meta-analysis looked at these studies and others and determined that the evidence was inconclusive when it came to whether “teaching gestural signs” actually leads to improved language development. In other words, the review study concluded, we just can’t say yet. In response, the authors of the 2000 study defended their conclusions and took issue with the 2005 review finding a lack of positive effects as a result of signing.

Since then, other studies have taken up the question, and over the last few years the argument has continued. A 2014 investigation did find evidence suggesting that “baby sign training had a significant, positive impact on the overall development of the children” observed. That same year, a separate article determined that “while there is no conclusive evidence to support the effectiveness of baby sign intervention…there is also no evidence that early exposure to sign language negatively affects typical development.”

Some have theorized that parents who decide to use baby sign language may be a self-selected group, in that they may have already given their babies certain genetic and environmental advantages when it comes to language and learning. It might follow, too, that parents who approach their children’s language development with this kind of intentionality spend more time reading with and talking to their babies about words and meaning, which in itself could account for a child’s increased facility with language or vocabulary later on.

The Bottom Line

WHAT DOES ALL this tell us? Well, at this point there’s conflicting evidence regarding whether baby signs offer demonstrable benefits in terms of language development and social and emotional growth. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of parents (including this one) who are big fans of baby signs, and it’s not hard to imagine that introducing babies to the relationship between gestures and words and giving them another tool of reciprocal communication might help them down the road as they learn to talk. But based on current research, we can’t conclusively say it does. Even setting aside the question of language and learning, though, there are relational benefits that come with your baby being able to tell you what she’s thinking and feeling and seeing. Possessing this tool has the potential to lower her frustration level, to increase communication between you two, and to give you information you might otherwise miss.

Baby sign language is certainly not a “have-to,” and you can’t count on it giving your child a developmental edge. But if you have the time and inclination, it’s a great way to connect with your child, learn what she’s interested in and noticing, and let her communicate with you in a fuller manner.

On a Personal Note

WHEN MY GRANDPARENTS learned we were using baby signs, they responded with barely masked skepticism. My grandpa said, “You mean like that gorilla, Koko?” They were worried my kids would never talk.

I assure you that all of my boys talked, on time or early, and developed rich vocabularies. I don’t know if learning to sign gave them any kind of cognitive or developmental boost, but I absolutely loved using baby signs. Around ten months, we began teaching our boys just a couple of basic signs—“more” and “done”—from a popular book about baby signs. Then, once they got those two down, we added more. By the time our eldest was fourteen months, he knew more than sixty signs, many of which we just made up intuitively. That means that between eleven and fourteen months, he learned to articulate dozens of concepts, words, and ideas that he didn’t yet have the motor ability to say.

While it makes sense to me that this process would benefit a child’s language-acquisition process, my favorite part of teaching signs was that I got to communicate with my sons earlier than I typically would have. Signing allowed me to see what caught their attention and what they were interested in. For example, I remember reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to my son when he was about a year old. At one point I turned a page, and my son started signing the word “lawnmower,” which involved pretending he was pulling the cord to start a mower. I said, “Lawnmower? Where?” He pointed at the page, and then I saw a mower in the back corner of a shed. It excited us both to have joined in this moment, and without the signs it wouldn’t have happened—and I wouldn’t have known that the lawnmower was interesting to him.

Even more helpful, we taught our sons to sign “hurt” (hand on the forehead like we’re checking for a fever) so they could tell us when they felt pain. They learned “scared” (patting the heart with the right hand, like a heart beating fast), which then morphed into “need comfort,” so they could let us know when they were upset or scared. Our sons would make up their own signs, too, which was really fun and sometimes funny, like when one son made a sign for “mama’s milk” by emphatically slapping his own chest.

I know what the science says, but I wouldn’t trade the signing months with each of our boys for anything. I think it let them realize early on that we wanted to know them and listen to them and to build trust, that we “got” them and would respond to their needs. Our family still uses a couple of signs to this day, even though the boys are all in their teens and taller than I am now. We all still do a soft, right-handed fist to pound twice on our heart to communicate “love you” when they’re about to get on a plane or say goodbye.