As a mom and a former early intervention speech-language pathologist (SLP), baby sign has been a big part of my life. I get a ton of questions about how, when, and why to use baby signs, so I thought I’d give some answers here. Keep reading to learn what baby signs are, why I use them, and how I teach them.
What is Baby Signing?
Informally speaking, baby signing is using gestures and signs based off a sign language, such as American Sign Language, with a child. When I teach baby signs, I am not actually trying to teach the language of ASL, with all its grammar and other linguistic components. Gestures used during songs like Itsy Bitsy Spider can also count as baby signing. I like this baby sign website for their dictionary of baby signs and video tutorials.
Common Baby Sign Myths
Before I get into how I typically teach signs, let’s bust a couple myths.
- Baby sign means I’m teaching my child ASL.
As I said above, baby sign may incorporate some signs from ASL, but unless you are going to commit to signing ASL correctly, your baby will not be learning how to sign ASL as a language. That means that both you and your baby may sign approximations or gestures that are not considered real signs in ASL vocabulary. That’s fine! It will still serve its purpose as a baby sign. - Baby sign will delay my child’s speaking.
There is no scientific evidence that use of baby sign will delay your child’s speaking. In fact, studies have shown that a child’s use of gestures is correlated with vocabulary size later in childhood. There are many other possible reasons for a speech and language delay, and if you have a concern, the best thing to do is get your child evaluated by an SLP. This leads us to the next point, which is…
Why Use Baby Sign?
You don’t need to use baby sign. If you have a hearing child in a typical hearing family environment, baby signing is completely optional. However, as an SLP I like using baby signs both in speech therapy treatment and at home for a several reasons:
- Babies may be able to sign before they can say words, giving them a way to communicate with you effectively early on.
- When teaching language, you can’t force a child to say a word, but you can help your child sign.
- Signs and gestures are symbolic. Language is also symbolic (words are symbols for real things). Working on your child’s ability to understand symbolism through gestures can help facilitate learning language.
Got it? Baby sign is not teaching them to sign ASL fluently, and it will not delay their speech. If anything, it will help them learn language, and it may be a useful tool for your family’s communication.
So how do you actually teach baby signs?
Obviously, there’s not one right way to teach signs. I’m sure every SLP has slightly varying methods. However, when I’m teaching other parents how to use baby signs, I like to boil it down into three steps of increased cueing. In SLP talk, “cueing” refers to the amount of help you give. My three steps are the Model, Model + Pause, and Hand Over Hand.
- Model
This means you show your child the sign while you say the word. Maybe you repeat it once or twice. And that’s it! Move on!
Scenario: Your child points at the crackers to communicate that they want more crackers. You say “more” while doing the sign. Then you give them the cracker.
Let’s say after modeling every day for a couple weeks, you don’t see your child imitating or trying the sign on their own. So you’ll move up to the next step. - Model + Pause
In this step, you model the sign and word like before, but you give a 3-5 second pause before giving them what they want. This gives them the opportunity to imitate your sign.
Scenario: Your child points to the crackers. You sign and say “More?” and wait three seconds. Then you give the cracker.
If you try this for a couple weeks and still don’t see any change, move to step three. - Hand Over Hand
Step three is the most amount of help you can give. Basically, you will model the sign, pause, and then physically take their hands to gently make the sign. Then give them what they want.
Scenario: Your child points to the crackers. You sign and say “More?” and wait three seconds. Nothing happens. You take your child’s hands to help them sign more and give them the cracker.
The important thing to remember about hand over hand is that it should really be very quick. Often, infants or toddlers may resist having you take their hands when they want something RIGHT AWAY. The last thing you want is for a fun teaching moment to turn torturous.
And that’s it! Remember that each child is different. Jemma learned to sign “all done” with just a model as early as six months old, but it took hand over hand and over three months for her to learn “more.”
I hope you find this basic guideline helpful! If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s language, please seek out an evaluation from a speech-language pathologist (your pediatrician can give you a referral but you can also self refer). And if you want to learn more about the evidence for baby signing, take a look at this ASHA article and its referenced studies.
