Information for Parents about Baby Signing

There are so many benefits of baby signing; we want you to enjoy the experience as much as we did...

• Enjoy two way communications from about 4-6 months of age.

• Let your baby understand what you are saying to them and have them communicate back.

• Know that you are providing them with a loving and nurturing environment; an understood baby is a content baby.

• Allow siblings to communicate through baby signing; not only fun but great for bonding.

• Research has also shown that babies who use baby sign language cry less often and learn to speak much earlier.

• Communication is the basis for all social interaction; by providing an earlier introduction to effective communication your baby will develop their social skill earlier.

• Most of the frustration felt by babies is due to their inability to communicate and be understood; reduce this frustration with baby signing.

But most of all, Baby Signing is a great way to spend interactive quality time with your baby and offers a great bonding experience for the whole family!

Before babies learn to speak, their only effective way of expressing themselves is through pointing, crying and screaming! Baby Signing teaches your baby to communicate with you using their hands until they have the ability to say the words.

Babies have the ability to interpret and understand what you are saying long before their vocal chords are developed enough to form words. For most, this understanding starts around 4-6 months of age. From about this age, your baby will also start to develop a sense of what they want and need however it will be a long time until they are able to have the ability to express this effectively.

Some parents expect their baby to start talking around the age of one; however speech development usually happens much later than this. The normal range for speech development in a toddler is quite varied however, the majority of toddlers will know between 5-20 words by the time they are 18 months old. By the time your toddler reaches the age of two you should be able to understand two thirds of what they are saying to you. By 30 months, your toddler should be able to be easily understood by the members of your family. So there is generally a gap of 12 months where your baby knows what they want but can’t communicate it effectively.

Baby signing can help to reduce the frustration felt during this crucial development stage. Scientists have now shown that visual languages such as signing and gestures form a very important part of the learning process for normal language development. Through the use of MRI they have actually shown that these visual languages are processed by the same part of the brain. In fact, using baby signing to communicate with your baby or toddler is much more natural than we first thought.

Don’t be alarmed that you need to learn ‘sign language’ as such in order to use baby sign language with your toddler. Baby signing isn’t that difficult, after all it is meant to be used by 6 month olds. Baby signing has a specific focus on keyword signing, so rather than trying to put a whole sentence together with your hands using finger spelled words, you only need to know the sign for that particular keyword. This is the major difference between the language of deaf community and baby sign language.

There are certain things that are very interesting to babies and toddlers and most of these revolve around their basic needs. Keywords such as food, eat, drink, hungry, hurt, tired and sleep will be very relevant, especially early on. Our baby signing program has taken the guesswork out of which keywords to teach first.

In consultation with child development experts, we have set out our baby signing program into 5 stages of learning. In the first stage, the most basic signs are taught for the most relevant keywords. As you progress through each stage the baby signs become more advanced as do the words. This structure also follows the natural progression of language acquisition; so the first keywords are often the first spoken words! There is also a baby sign language dictionary at the back of our book for a quick alphabetical reference if you need it.

Toddler Interpreter is here to help you learn more about Baby Sign Language and show you the easiest way to introduce Baby Signing into your home. Baby Signs are easy to learn with our Baby Sign Language Book and our Baby Sign Language Chart.