Signing with Your Infant or Toddler: ASL V. Baby Sign

Parents everywhere are attempting to communicate to their infants and toddlers earlier through gestures and signs. The benefits of teaching your child to sign are numerous! Signing with your child not only accelerates their verbal communication, but has also found to increase IQs and help practically eliminate fits caused by the inability to communicate throughout the terrible twos. Mothers have two options when teaching their child to communicate through gestures - baby signs or American Sign Language (ASL).

Baby sign, or home-based sign, is the development of gestures and signs based on your own child's natural instincts, along with your own. You can encourage gestures he or she already makes, or make up your own that come naturally to you. When using baby signs, you develop a language all of your own to communicate with your son or daughter. Baby sign can be easier to teach, since it comes naturally and is completely made-up by the caregiver.

If you're having trouble creating your own language, tools are available. You can get help, talk with other moms, and even purchase a starter kit from Baby Signs at www.babysigns.com. In addition, how-to books and other information are available at local bookstores and libraries. However, may I suggest an alternative? Try teaching them a true actual language instead of one that they will only use temporarily.

American Sign Language or ASL is a language developed for the hard-of-hearing and deaf to communicate with each other and the hearing. Instead of being made up of words, ASL uses gestures to communicate concepts and ideas. For examples, to say that it seems like you and your husband were made for each other, you wouldn't sign "made". The sign for "made" indicates the actual creation and building, instead you'd want to say that your husband and you are perfect for each other. Also, to say there's lots of room in your house, you wouldn't sign "lots of room". The sign for "lots of room" would be translated as lots of rooms, so instead you want to say lots of empty space.