Oh baby, talk to me
Baby sign language lets infants communicate their needs and frustrations— to the amazement of their parents.
by Nerys Parry

“Baby I’m here/Ready to hear/What you’re not saying /I can hear your heartbeat pounding/So don’t keep me waiting /C’mon and talk to me.”

Lyrics from Talk to Me, by LeAnn Rimes/
Ron Grimes/Jon Rutherford

My neighbour serves her daughter, Jacqueline, red peppers in a small plastic cup. The blonde-haired Jacqueline beams and eats the peppers two spears at a time. I am impressed; there aren’t that many two year olds who get that excited about vegetables.

But Jacqueline is about to impress me even more. When her mother returns to the table and makes a sweeping motion with her hands, Jacqueline shakes her head and taps the tips of her fingers together. Her mother nods, then returns to the table with more red spears of pepper.

Without using a word, Jacqueline has just asked her mother for ‘more’.

It’s not as though Jacqueline can’t speak (it’s hard to stop her, in fact); she is just one of today’s many hearing children who have been taught sign language as infants, and who have been communicating with their parents from as young as six months old.

“Signing is a fabulous tool,” exclaims Mary Young, who taught her son Adam his first sign at the age of 8 months. From then on, “there was never any time that he couldn’t tell me what he wanted,” says Young.

Teaching sign language to infants has become one of the hottest trends around. Anyone who saw the 2004 release of the movie Meet the Fockers will remember grandfather Robert De Niro carrying on an almost farcically-articulate signed conversation with a baby still bobbing in a bouncy chair.

Then actor Deborah Messing told Oprah and the world how she signed with her own children. Suddenly, it seemed like everywhere across North America tots in high chairs were tapping their lips for food, and daycare workers were flipping their hands asking, ‘diaper change?’, which (at least in this author’s opinion) sure beats the old ‘sniff and whiff’ method by a long shot.

But just what is it about this fancy finger-play that has caught the attention of both Hollywood stars and everyday parents? One of the biggest attractions appears to be that in a world of over-worked and over-stressed parents, signing can make life easier.

“It helps reduce frustration, both the parent’s and the baby’s,” says Stephanie Escott, who teaches “Wee Hands” infant sign language workshops in Northumberland and Peterborough.

Child expert Dr. Burton White agrees. “We have … learned that the period between 17 and 20 months of age is a particularly difficult time, in that a normal child is very limited in regard to frustration tolerance, and being unable to express himself exacerbates the problem. A child who can sign at that stage of life is a child who will cause considerably less frustration for himself and his parents. That means the attachment process can move along much more smoothly and probably to a better outcome.”

And if making those pre-terrible-two’s a little bit easier isn’t enough incentive for most parents, there are other long-term benefits. Recent studies have shown that children who signed as babies have on average a 12-point higher IQ than those who didn’t. Whether this is all due to sign language is unclear, but there does seem to be evidence that learning sign language (or any second language) helps a child acquire a third language, such as French, more easily. In addition, signing babies often talk sooner, and usually with larger vocabularies, than other children. Toddlers who sign are also more likely to develop a strong interest in books and reading.

But perhaps the best thing that signing does for parents is to open a window into the mind of their little miracle – a window that is usually shut tight until 12 months of age or more when a child typically develops the physical ability to speak. “Having a conversation with a 9-month old baby is mind-boggling,” says Young. “Teaching Adam to sign is the best thing I’ve ever done, mostly because it offers a totally fascinating glimpse into a world you otherwise wouldn’t know about.” For example, Adam was playing with building blocks one day in Young’s pet-free home when Young noticed that he kept rubbing his fingers together in the sign for ‘dogs.’ “I realized he was thinking about my friend’s dogs, Boots and Breezy, while he played, and was possibly even incorporating them into his game,” says Young. “Now, that’s amazing.”

Rose Goodall, who taught her two daughters to sign using a pocket guide, was also amazed at her ability to connect with her children through sign. One night, Goodall woke up to find her 14-month old daughter, Amanda, wandering down the hall. When Goodhall called her name, Amanda turned and made the signs for ‘feed me’ and ‘milk’. At just over a year, Amanda was able to tell her mother that she was “going to the kitchen to get herself some milk” – just using her hands. “It was really incredible,” says Goodall.

Paediatric researchers have known for a long time that infants have a desire to communicate long before they can actually speak. Anyone who has ever seen a bowl of peas fly across the table from the direction of the high chair, or had a little hand reach down their shirt and squeeze their breast in public, will probably agree.

“Every child has the ability [to sign]”, says Escott, whose son Marcus was born at only 24 weeks, has cystic fibrosis, and still signs. But she’s also careful to caution parents that every child is different, and that the time it takes to learn signs is as individual as the children themselves. Some kids in Escott’s class pick up sign language almost immediately. For others, it takes longer. Signing can be a slow process that requires a lot of parental patience, warns Dr. White.

If it all sounds like too much work for today’s already-overloaded parents, don’t panic. “Nobody’s expecting you to learn American Sign Language (ASL) [in its entirety],” Escott says. Just knowing a few signs is enough for most parents to benefit from signing. “More important than the number of signs is sticking to [the signing],” says Escott.

Dr. Joseph Garcia, pioneer of the Sign With your Baby program, recommends starting with just three signs. The most common first word learned by Dr. Garcia’s signing babies is ‘more’. Then comes ‘milk’ and ‘eat’, followed by such popular ones as ‘dog’ or ‘cat’ or – a really fun one if executed with loud, spluttering sound effects – ‘airplane’. ‘Pain’ is also a useful sign, as mom Lauren Aktinson discovered.

“My daughter had a sore tummy,” says Atkinson, who is one of Escott’s students. “And she kept saying, ‘tummy, tummy’”. Atkinson wasn’t sure if her daughter was hungry or suffering until her daughter made the sign for ‘pain’ by touching the tips of her two index fingers together. Atkinson understood immediately that it was a stomach ache. “It’s rewarding,” she says, “to know that they can tell you what they want.”

To show me how easy signing can be, Escott tries to teach me a Kim Votry song which was written especially for caregiver to help them teach sign language to infants.

“I want more milk,” Escott sings, first knocking her fingers together, and then squeezing her right hand like she’s milking a cow. I make a clumsy attempt to follow her actions. At first it’s like trying to rub my stomach while patting my head, but after a few stanzas I get into the rhythm. It feels like I’m back at camp, learning clapping songs or a new canoe stroke – there’s an indescribable thrill of physical mastery every time I execute a sign. It’s so much fun, in fact, that even though both my children are well past the baby stage (and have developed a spoken vocabulary that – truth be told – can get a little too rich), I can’t resist teaching them a few signs as soon as I come home.

A week later, as I’m driving with my family on vacation, I catch the sky-blue eyes of my five-year-old in the rear view mirror. He makes the sign for ‘I love you’. I wave it back without even turning my head or missing my exit, and see his smile spread in the mirror.

Now that’s what I call communication.

Nerys Parry is a freelance writer and mother of two who lives in Port Hope.