Benefits of Signing with Your Baby

  • Accelerates language acquisition. Research studies have found that signing babies normally begin to speak earlier and have larger vocabularies than non-signing babies.

  • Provides a parent the opportunity to develop a window into their child's mind. By including signs in daily activities, parents spend less time guessing what children want and more time fulfilling their specific needs.

  • Teaches a simple language that allows babies to easily express their immediate desires and needs, significantly lowering frustration levels for everyone.

  • Allows babies to lead the conversation about topics that interest them. When a parent then verbalizes the sign, it fortifies a baby’s expanding vocabulary.

  • Utilizes more diverse areas of the brain for communication. Rather than language being processed solely through auditory pathways, signing adds visual and kinesthetic emphasis to a child’s auditory input.

  • Gives babies a sense of control when they know that those around them not only hear them but understand them. This greatly enhances a child’s self esteem and emotional stability.

  • Helps parents and health care providers localize pain and identify medical conditions.

  • Enables children to express their fears or concerns.

  • Decreases aggressive behavior such as biting, hitting, and excessive noise in preschool and elementary school programs.

  • Increases a child’s interest in reading.

  • Builds an iconic bridge between two languages in a bilingual family. For example, the same signs can be used for words spoken in English or Spanish. Knowing a sign for a word helps a child recognize the same word spoken in other languages.

  • May actually improve a child's IQ. Research studies have followed signing babies as they mature. At eight years old, these children scored, on average, 12 points higher in IQ testing than a control group of non-signing eight year-olds. The signers had a mean IQ of 114 (75th percentile) versus the non-signers’ mean score of 102 (53rd percentile). The study was designed to equalize socioeconomic factors between the two groups.