23, Teaching Baby Sign Language

1/1/2021

Are you wondering what’s in your baby’s head? What do they want? Most children begin to talk around 12 months old, but they actually try to communicate with their parents much earlier. They express their feelings and needs in different ways. If we don’t get to understand what they mean, it causes misunderstanding and frustration. Today I am going to introduce to you one way to teach them to express their feelings, wants, and needs without crying and whining. It is the ASL American Sign Language. In today’s video, we are going to talk about the importance and benefits of teaching your baby sign language.

Signing with your baby has a positive impact on brain development. It enriches and enhances babies’ cognitive processes, higher abstract, and creative thinking, better problem-solving skills, greater cognitive flexibility, better listening skills, and greater academic achievement. Sign language speeds up speech development, improves a child’s IQ.

Signing with your baby can build a better vocabulary. People have a natural tendency to use their bodies to communicate such as pointing, and waving hands. Sign language takes that natural tendency and helps reinforce vocabulary and the meanings of words. Sign language utilizes more diverse areas of the brain for communication, so babies actually develop spoken language skills earlier and have a comparatively larger verbal vocabulary than non-signing babies when they start speaking.

Signing with your baby can empower and gives them an increased feeling of control. Because they can communicate more successfully with those around them. Knowing mommy and daddy not only hear them but also understand them can provide a child with the feeling that his or her parents value what he or she says. This will lead to an increase in self-esteem and parent-child bonding. Signing with your baby can improve their spelling skills. Signing gives children another tool for remembering spelling words and leaves a larger imprint on the brain. Our muscles have their own memories, so when we add signing a word to orally spelling the word, it is easier to remember.

Signing with your baby can build an iconic bridge between two languages in a bilingual family. For example, the same signs can be used for words spoken in English and Spanish. Knowing a sign for a word helps a child recognize the same word spoken in other languages.

The ASL sign language was first brought out as early as the 1800s by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. ASL is now classified as a world language, the same as Spanish, French. Therefore, if a child speaks sign language, the child is considered bilingual. Parents of hearing children are discovering sign language is beneficial for children in a wide variety of situations. In our channel, we post some exciting ASL learning activities once in a while, which help children and their family members learn together. The best way to teach your little one how to sign is practicing and signing with them together. It's also a fun family activity.

‍