baby

Article by Allan Michael Taylor

Obviosly, your baby is upset. What’s not so clear is–why? Teaching your baby ASL could dramatically improve communication between the both of you whether hearing or hard of hearing and make caring for your child much simpler.Your baby may be 18 months old before being able to communicate his or her needs. Babies want to tell us what they want, but they can’t do it just yet because it takes longer for all the parts that form speech to develop. It’s that time gap–the desire to communicate and the inability to form the words–that often leads to frustration and tantrums. Purely by luck, researchers learned that babies whose parents were deaf who are exposed to American Sign Language were consistently signing as early as seven months, and could use their tiny hands and little bodies to have a conversation by the time they were nine months old. From there, a new concept was launched: Since hand-eye coordination develops much quicker than speech, hearing babies can be taught simple signs to indicate what’s important to them. “Eat,” “sleep,” “teddy bear” and “mommy” signs could make both your baby and you a lot happier, and a lot more in tune. Skeptics who thought teaching babies ASL would slow the development of their verbal skills were proven wrong. Studies have shown baby signers actually develop better verbal skills than non-signing infants of the same age. There is no harm in starting to sign to your baby as early as three months, but an infant six months old is likely to have the attention span to watch what your hands are doing. Most infants exposed to simple ASL consistently will have the motor skills to begin making hand gestures and movements on their own by about their eighth month. If you’re late, welcome to the party. You can teach your baby sign language at nine months, all the way up to 3 years. Begin by signing a few simple words consistently while either pointing to or using the item. When it’s time for bed, put your palms together up to your ear, rest your head atop your hands, and close your eyes. Two thumbs up against the front of your body, raised up and down in a scrubbing motion, is any easy one for your infant to learn to associate with bath time. Once your baby is watching for 7 to 10 seconds, there’s a good chance the connection is being made. During the learning process, as your baby experiments with his or her hands trying to figure out what you are doing, praise and encourage the effort. Once your baby signs that first word, others will quickly follow. Within the next two or three months, you’ll be amazed that you and the little one are having two-way conversations, much earlier than had you stuck solely with verbalizing. So now you know what your baby needs or wants, there’s less anxiety on both sides, and you have a calmer, happier home. Don’t stop there. Babies who sign have a head-start on many development stages. Besides being faster at mastering verbal language, baby signing also increases vocabulary, promotes the early use of complex sentences, and increases interest in books. Hold those college applications for a few years, but you’ve definitely given your child a great head start for kindergarten. Signing has also taught your infant how to resolve conflicts without kicking and screaming, so expect your child to become the peacemaker in the group when everyone wants to play with the same toy. Remember the first time your baby, just a day or two old, grabbed your finger, and your heart almost pounded out of your chest. You’ll feel the same way when your infant indicates himself, crosses his arms on his chest, and gestures to you in the sign language expression of, “I love you.” If you’re ready to begin the communication between you and your baby, visit http://tinyurl.com/9mp888 to learn more about how you can make this possible–get started today!

baby