Sending signals early on
• Sign language with a smile
• Learning signs
Advertiser Staff and News Services
When 13-month-old Alexandra Poletajev is hungry, she pumps her pudgy fist.
She can't say, "I want milk." Not yet. But her mother, Silvana, understands exactly.
Alexandra uses sign language to communicate, even though she and her parents can hear.
"When she does cry and wimper, she's signing at the same time. So I know what she wants," said Poletajev of Cherry Hill, N.J., who began teaching Alexandra and her older sister, 2 1/2-year-old Gabriela, sign language as infants. "It's really remarkable."
Babies who can hear but are too young to speak are using all kinds of learned gestures — call it baby sign language — to communicate with parents, sitters and even each other.
Some pediatricians are encouraging baby signs as a way to ease the terrible twos, and tykes at daycare centers are replacing cries and whines with gestures, letting teachers know what they want. Advocates say the hand gestures reduce frustration for all parties.
Some experts also praise American Sign Language for helping children develop reading and speaking skills more quickly as well as pick up a second language.
While teaching sign language to hearing babies has not caught on widely in Hawai'i, the practice is growing in pockets on the Mainland.
Parents with babies as young as 7 months in tow are taking American Sign Language at mommy-and-me classes. Others are teaching babies homemade gestures as taught in the 1996 book "Baby Signs."
In Orlando, Fla., baby signing parties are popular. In Washington, daycare centers have added sign language to the curriculum. At KinderHaus, for example, 10-month-olds sign for bottles.
Educator Joseph Garcia of Bellingham, Wash., helped kick off the movement with his 1994 book, "Toddler Talk," now republished by Seattle's Northlight Communications as "Sign with Your Baby." A package of the book and a training video made Amazon.com's list of its 20 best-selling family and parenting books of 2001.
While some how-to-sign books, notably "Baby Signs" by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, use made-up gestures, Garcia relies on American Sign Language, which he calls a "gift" from the deaf.
Despite the charm of communicating with babies who only babble when they open their mouths, some child development experts take exception to all the fuss over formally teaching signs to babies who'll speak soon enough.
"I guess I don't see the need for it," said Henry Shapiro, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' section on developmental-behavioral pediatrics.
"It's not harmful," added Shapiro, of All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It's just not clear there's anything special or magical about teaching sign language. ... I wouldn't let it crowd out other play."
Babies come equipped with lots of ways to communicate, from pointing and gurgling to crying, child-development experts point out.
"Use what comes naturally," said Peter Gorski, a professor of child development at Harvard Medical School. "It's so much richer. ... You shouldn't have to read about it."
That noted, baby sign language has an undeniable appeal for many.
"I did it for my sanity," said Melinda Ota of Mount Laurel, N.J., whose Jared, 2 ý, and Kira, 2, are taking a four-week, $60 sign-language class for children who hear. Each knows a few signs, including "more," "please" and "fish." "It's really helped at meal times," Ota said.
Follow-up studies
Until the 1980s, many believed that hearing children who used gestures would suffer delays in speech. That's not true, studies show.
Once they began speaking, babies who signed actually added words more quickly, according to studies in 1993 and 2000 done by Acredolo, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, and Goodwyn, a professor of child development at California State University at Stanislaus. The babies also formed simple sentences earlier than nongesturing babies.
Follow-up studies of some of the babies — when they were 8-year-old children — found that the signers scored 12 points higher on an IQ test than nonsigners.
The researchers have studied only children who use made-up gestures, such as sniffing for flower or blowing for fish.
Most toddlers drop signing as they learn to speak more proficiently, sometimes keeping a few in-family signs such as "I love you."
Academics still argue over whether babies' gestures truly represent language. But some psychologists believe tots' signing proves that physical, not cognitive, limitations keep little ones from talking.
"It completely blows (Jean) Piaget's theory out of the water that says that babies can't mentally represent symbols until they are almost 2 years and therefore can't learn to talk until then," says Stephanie Stein, a Central Washington University professor of developmental psychology, in an online review of Garcia's book.
"It's the fine motor skills that are lacking in young infants, not the conceptual ability to understand and use language."
How much babies sign depends on their personalities as well as how consistently parents and caregivers use gestures. Advocates recommend starting with babies age 6 to 8 months, though older children can benefit, too.
Some tots pick up a few signs, while others link words together (for example, "pain," "mouth" and "medicine" to say they want teething relief). Some even create their own signs.
Sixteen-month-old Sarah Kushner of Seattle, for one, decided the ASL sign for "swing," which she also uses for "playground," wasn't dramatic enough for such a fun thing. So she made up her own energetic sign, paddling her hands over her head, said mom Lise Kreps.
But does baby sign language build a smarter baby?
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, director of the Infant Language Lab at Temple University in Philadelphia, allowed that baby sign language can be fun, even useful in fostering communication. But she was doubtful about super-IQ claims. "Any parent who spends time talking with infants is going to have a child with a higher IQ," said Pasek, an author of "How Babies Talk."
Happier babies is the primary goal of signing, says Stephanie Stein, a Central Washington University professor of developmental psychology. She dismisses critics who fault signing as another way for overachieving parents to create "superbabies."
"Signing is a tool to make children's lives easier and make their relationship with parents less stressful," she said. "It's not about seeing how much you can cram in their brains."
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Tips for signing with babies:
- Start with one or two simple signs such as "milk," "eat," or "more."
- Don't ask your child to perform signs out of context. This can confuse the baby.
- Don't make signing a condition of care, such as forcing the baby to sign "bottle" before giving it to him.
- Use signs naturally by always pairing the gesture with the spoken word.
- Encourage all the child's caregivers to learn basic signs.
- Be patient as it can take weeks or months before babies sign back.
- Smile when you sign so the baby knows it's fun.
- Watch for variations as many babies adapt signs or lack the small-motor skills to make signs exactly right.
- If an American Sign Language gesture is too difficult, make up your own family sign.
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Books:
- "Baby Signs" by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn (Contemporary Books, $12.95). Also at babysigns.com.
- "Sign With Your Baby" by Joseph Garcia (Northlight Communications and Stratton Kehl Publications, $14.95). Also at sign2me.com.
- "How Babies Talk," by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (Dutton, $25.95).
Online resources:
- Signing Baby (signingbaby.com) offers links, tips and a discussion board.
- Sign with Me (signwithme.com) offers a video dictionary of words commonly used by children.
- Sign with Your Baby (sign2me.com) is a Web site for Joseph Garcia's book by the same name, featuring a discussion group, video clips and FAQ.
- American Sign Language Browser (commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm) has descriptions and video demonstrations of hundreds of ASL signs.
