Frequently asked questions

Signing with your pre-verbal baby can:

• Accelerate verbal language development
• Increase IQ
• Increase interest in books
• Stimulate intellectual development
• Change the way you interact with your baby
• Empower your baby to express wants, needs and feelings sooner
• Reduce frustration and avert temper tantrums
• Build infant self-esteem

In their book Baby Signs, Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn suggest you can start modeling signs from birth. After 6 months, however, babies are more likely to have the ability to remember signs and the motor skills to produce them.

Use the readiness questions below to see whether your baby is showing interest in communicating. A “yes” to any one of them means it’s a good time to start. For most babies this falls between 8 and 12 months, although sign language can fill gaps in communication through toddlerhood.

• Is your baby at least 6 months old?
• Is your baby bringing objects to you and looking for a response?
• Is your baby beginning to wave bye-bye or clap hands?
• Is your baby beginning to shake his head “yes” or “no”?
• Is your baby taking an interest in picture books, playing “so big” or finger plays (like Itsy Bitsy Spider)?
• Is your baby frustrated when you don’t understand what he needs?
• If your baby is a little older, are there still important things he or she doesn’t have words for? It’s not too late!

It depends, but if you begin signing when your child is 6–7 months old, it’s quite possible that by 8–9 months he will be signing to you. Some children don’t sign back until closer to 12 months.

Typically they start with signs and gestures that involve facial expression (blowing, panting), then whole-arm signs (bye-bye, clapping), then hand signs (more, milk), and finally signs with various hand shapes and more dexterity (cat, pointing). Once they’ve internalized the meanings and developed the cognitive and motor skills, they will communicate with you — much like learning speech.

Research says the opposite is true: signing with your child can accelerate speech development. Because they’re already using language in their heads and putting signed words together, once their articulators can form the sounds they quickly add speech to their signs. Gradually they drop the signs and use only the spoken word.

Much like crawling doesn’t inhibit walking, there has been no indication of speech delay from signs, according to 20 years of research by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn.

No. The goal isn’t to teach you or your child a second language, but to make earlier communication possible. You’ll support spoken English by modeling signs for key words, and your child will sign those key words — launching pads for language exposure.