Baby Sign Language Will Help You Speak to Your Child

Written By Arman Zulhajar on Friday, December 9, 2011 | 12:58 AM

By Sophia Curtis


Teachers and parents of children recognize how exasperating it could be to be unable to determine what his or her youngsters are thinking about. Usually motions and also whining may be plainly interpreted as a proof of communicating, just like when little ones reach up both their arms. Older people and also teenagers feel that a toddler with arms up in the air desires to be picked up. But imagine if the child is actually reaching out toward a stuffed toy on a shelf or is calling attention to a specific thing intriguing outside of the windows?

Teaching sign language to deaf or other children with hard-of-hearing members of the family is not new. Researchers found from a study that teaching sign language, typically, to developing children has grown to become preferred since the publication of Baby Signs by Goodwyn and Acredelo. Attention to signing with babies received a considerable amount of publicity.

Numerous solutions have been demonstrated to help families and teachers learn to better communicate with children as young as 6 months old. In the popular 2005 film, "Meet the Fockers," Jack talks to his grandson making use of sign language. Hundreds of interesting journal and newspaper articles, and numerous television shows, have featured testimonies on programs that teach infant and baby sign language.

There is absolutely no reliable estimate of the number of families who sign with their children, but Amazon.com reported sales of Baby Signs is in the top 300 of all books sold in 2004 and 2005. Even in 2006, when many other baby signing books became available, the book remained in the top 600. The third edition is available on Kindle, Amazon's portable reading device. Some of these programs claim that using baby sign language will speed verbal development and some claim to enhance early brain development. However, a search for scholarly research and empirical studies to support these claims finds that there is conflicting evidence.

It was once believed that talking marked the precise starting point of the ability for children to think symbolically and use symbols for communication. However, research has shown that children gradually come to use symbols to represent feelings. Adults and other children support children's language acquisition from the moment they are born and some believe perhaps even before birth. When family members speak and read to children, they can create many different aspects of communication including how to make sounds as well as to take turns in conversation. They demonstrate labels for interesting objects and events.

Well before children are able to develop control of the articulatory moves required for meaningful oral communication beyond babbling, they master many gross motor skills used in manual modes of communication, such as sign language. Very young children can, for example, grasp objects and point to things. These intentional communication signals, known as "performatives" or "deictic" gestures, begin around 10 months. As these infant body signals are used over and over, a type of sign language emerges. This was a form of communication used by small children that progresses typically into word use.

The proponents of infant sign language believe that because sign language and gestures, like spoken language, signify thoughts in a symbolic way, it may be easier for very young children to first learn language by way of signs. Perhaps the essentials of language acquired through the manual modality shift to the verbal technique when children develop the ability to create phonemes.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment