The Benefits of Teaching Your Baby to Sign (that you never thought about!)

E is nearly 2 years old! And around 4 months ago she started REALLY talking, I mean, full sentences! It was just *poof* out of nowhere here monosyllabic utterances turned into sentences. As a proud momma I have to share her profoundly beautiful first sentence:

"I want cheese!"


Isn't that beautiful? Lol.

Anyway, ever since she started talking I've been thinking about our experience with sign language and wondered what effects signing had on her acquisition of verbal English.

A little background. E started signing around 10 months old. I signed with her very early on, but she didn't do her first sign until then. (first sign if you are curious was "milk"). After the first sign clicked, she signed all the time, and only needed to be shown a new sign once or twice before she had mastered it. Signing proved to be a wonderful experience.

The benefits of signing are pretty well known, a better bond with baby, better communication, less tantrums and contrary to popular beleif- babies who sign actually talk sooner, and have a better vocabulary and use longer sentences (I am definitely seeing this with E)!

While I was recollecting on our signing experience together, I considered some other benefits of signing that you probably never thought of!

Benefits of Signing-bet you didn't think of these!

1.) Better motor skills

Sign language requires some pretty advanced use of your hands and fine motor skills. In order to be understood, you have to do the sign more or less correctly. (E and most babies who sign have their own unique "style" but you'll learn the way your baby signs pretty quickly) Constantly learning new ways to use her hands gave E great dexterity.

2.) Better control over emotions

I firmly believe that signing helped E to be a more emotionally stable child. there are 3 reasons for this.

 1.) signing let her tell me exactly what she wanted, so I was able to respond quickly to her needs. this made it so she didn't have to scream cry and yell in frustration for mommy to get her a banana. 

2.) I taught her the signs for "happy", "sad", "scared", "mad". Psychology tells us that simply LABELING an emotion is a HUGE step in taking the power (and for small children, oftentimes the scary-ness) of the emotion away and being able to deal with it.   

          There would be times when something scared E and she'd start to cry. All I had to do was ask her, "Are you scared? Say 'I'm scared!'".  She would sign "scared" and IMMEDIATELY stop crying. It was a miracle!!!

3.)Fear of the unknown is probably one of the oldest fears, and starts at a very young age. There would be times that seeing an unfamiliar bug, animal or sound would scare E. When this happened, I would show her the sign (bug, spider, thunder, vacuum, etc) and she would calm down. for some reason, showing her the SIGN as opposed to just saying the word made her calm down. She would sign it back and nod like "oh, this thing has a name. I can name it. it's not scary". 

3.) A more creative understanding of expression and language

From a very early age, signing and talking to your child teaches them that there is more than one way to express yourself. More than one way of communicating. I believe that this sets the stage for bilingualism, as well as a more creative and expressive child. 

4.) A better long-term memory

Okay, this might be a bit of a stretch but I actually fond some evidence to back it up!

So here's the story. E was walking to the park one day and her BRAND NEW ball dropped into a stream. She was probably around 19 months?  It was a big ordeal (for me) to get it out but we finally got it. Well, we didn't return to that same stream until maybe a month later. She looked at the stream and signed "ball" like she was reminding me that her ball had fallen into the stream. 

I had no idea that her memory was that good! But when I thought about it, many psychologists believe that we can't remember much about when we were babies (before age 3) because we don't yet have power of language. And memory is in fact just remembering the stories we TELL OURSELVES about events. 

So by giving our babies the power of sign language, we are giving them the power to construct their own memories better. Plus, because sign language is a MOTOR language, used by moving your hands, memories can be formed using not only in the language part of our brain, but also in the motor part of our brain connected with movement. This makes the memories stronger and easier to retrieve. 

I might have some of  the science slightly goofy here, but the general premise that signing benefits memory is generally agreed upon based on the research I've done. 

One last benefit of teaching your baby to sign- bug alerts!

so this story is pretty funny. One night when putting E to bed my husband was leaning his back against the wall. Suddenly E sits up in bed upset, and my husband asks her to lay back down. She points at my husband and signs "bug! bug!". He turns around and right above his head on the wall he was leaning against was a giant spider!

Way to go E! You never know when you need a professional bug spotter around to keep you safe!

Is it hard to start signing?

I loved signing with E! It was so exciting when she'd ask for a new sign. We would sign the things we saw in books, we would sign when we sang, sign the things we saw on walks. It was so much fun. But pretty soon, she started asking for signs for things I didn't know!!! What to do? Thankfully, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be! If she would ask me for a sign I didn't know, all I had to do was take out my phone and google "baby sign for ____" and within seconds I was teaching her the sign. If you want to do it, start today!

One last tip, I recommend watching a VIDEO on how to sign, not a picture. I could never figure out what the little arrows meant and videos are just so much easier!

What signs do I recommend?

I recommend starting with these great signs, then move onto the signs for the words you and baby need most!

(check out "not an exact science" they have baby sign language. she does the sign enough times that it helps it sink in. you can find her videos on youtube too)

http://www.notanexactscience.com/baby-sign-language/starter-signs/

Essentials

MORE

ALL DONE

MILK

EAT

WATER

BOOK

other essentials

TOILET 

SLEEP

HURT

OUTSIDE

HAPPY

SAD
SCARED

DADDA

MOMMA

BOOK

BALL

other signs E and I used daily

FLOWER

BANANA

APPLE

CRACKER

JUICE

PLAYDO

DOG

BIRD

CAT

BUG

GORILLA

BABY

HELP

POOP
PEE

WALK

STROLLER

UP

DOWN

OUTSIDE

COLD

HOT

BINKY

SONG/MUSIC

I hope you have a wonderful signing journey! Please feel free to post questions, comments and your fun signing moments!