Sign language has long been used to enable the severely hearing impaired, who have never acquired speech, to communicate. There has, however, been a long standing controversy among the experts in the field over whether learning sign language lowers the infant’s motivation to learn to speak. Now a similar controversy has arisen over whether or not to teach signing to hearing infants so that they can communicate before they learn to talk. This idea came from Joseph Garcia who, in 1999, published a book entitled, Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before they learn to speak (Garcia 1999). Garcia was not suggesting that parents teach their children ASL (American Sign Language) the formal system of signing taught to those with limited or no hearing. Rather he suggested that infants could be taught simple signs to communicate their wants such as a sign for juice or milk.

Critics of infant signing have raised the same objections as they have to signing for the limited hearing population. Their main argument is that learning to sign will discourage the infant from learning to speak. Reports from parents who have used signing (and the number is growing rapidly both in the US and abroad) is that the opposite is the case. Parents who have used signing with their infants find that they learn to speak as early, and as well, as infants who have not learned signing. Research studies have backed them up. A study by Iverson and Meadow, for example, found that infant signing was closely tied to their spoken language development and appeared to pave the way for it. (Iverson 2005). It seems reasonable to conclude at this stage, as most in deaf education have conceded, that the most important thing is for the child to acquire the concept of communication through whatever means he or she is able.

Signing does give the infant tools to communicate specific wants and thus limits the frustration of both infant and parent. If you decide to teach your infant to sign, here are a few simple rules to follow:

1. Use the infant’s spontaneous gestures (e.g. palm up) as a guide for creating signs for simple words like, “more,” “down” “juice”

2. Always pair the sign you are making with the word it represents.

3. Learning to sign takes time, often more than a month, so you have to be patient.

4. Teach others, who interact with the baby, the signs that you are using.

5. Make sure you praise your infant with a big smile and words, when he or she does use the sign.

A final personal note. One of my granddaughters has Downs Syndrome and her parents taught her a few simple signs. She is two now, and is talking up a storm, Signing certainly didn’t interfere with her language development and may well have helped it. My son and daughter in law did not buy any CD’s or kits, just taught Maya a few easy signs using gestures she made herself. So you really don’t need to purchase anything, just keep it simple.

Teaching your infant just a few signs will reduce the stress, and enrich the quality, of your parent-child interactions.

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Garcia, J. (1999). Sign with your Baby. Bellington, WA, Stratton-Kehl Publications Inc.

Iverson, J. M., Meadow, Susan Goldie (2005). "Gesture Paves the Way for Language Development." Psychological Science 16(5): 367-371.