Sign Language in Infants

The other evening I was watching the news and there was a story on a local class that was being taught here in Eugene that teaches infants how to sign. Not deaf babies but babies who are absolutely capable of hearing. This is a new craze that parents are trying to teach their infants. For years parents have been teaching their babies to sign but not until recently classes are being offered to help parents teach signing.
These classes are offered at the Eugene Park and Recreation Center, by a woman who believes sign language is going to be the future way to communicate with you infants. Dr. Kathy Faber is widely known for her research and teaching of sign language. She has taught in Europe and all across the US and she is now bringing her services here in Eugene.
Some parents are capable of telling what their babies want by recognizing the type of crying their infants do. Some babies have high pitch screams when they need to be changed and others have long drawn out cries when they are hungry. But not all babies have the same pattern. Teaching infants how to sign, can give you a better idea of what they want. Dr. Faber said the whole craze started to limit babies from crying and whining over their frustrations because of their limit of communication with their parents. One parent of these classes says that her 3 month year old can’t sign but he can recognize what she is signing. The signs that are being taught are simple gesture that infants are capable of doing. A simple gesture like food, more, drink, diaper, bed, mommy, and daddy are the most popular signs being taught. If your infant could communicate what exactly they wanted crying and whining would be lessened.
Psychologists who have investigated this new craze say that infants understand language before their vocal cords develop. This is not surprising to me because we have learned that infants can count and recognize many other complex things before they could speak. The University of Wisconsin has done extensive research on the effects of infants who have learned sign language. They have concluded that infants who learn sign language have a larger vocabulary and will develop a higher IQ compared to infants who don’t learn sign language. Children who are taught sign language are more capable of learning a second language later in life. These infants can also learn how to speak earlier than other infants who have not learned sign language.

One of the things that I found to be fascinating that babies who signing go through something called “signing exposure” which is similar to vocal languages. Once a baby learns a few signs and realizes that signing will get them what they want and their ability to learn signs faster becomes evident. This is similar to the critical period of language development, once an infant learns a few words they make connection with other words, then they go through a stage where the learn words very rapidly. These are exciting finding that might change the way children are raised.