Understand Basic Baby Sign Language

Series Summary

In the United States, teaching sign language to non-signing families to communicate with their hearing infants and toddlers was developed by two professors in 1982, and produced through a 1985 article in Human Development titled, “Symbolic gesturing in language development: A case study.” These proponents believe that while infants and toddlers have a desire to communicate their needs and wishes, they lack the ability to do so clearly because the production of speech, which requires coordinating the lips, tongue, breath, and vocal cords simultaneously, lags behind cognitive ability in the first months and years of life.

Those who believe in baby sign language feel that hand-eye coordination is possible in advance of the acquisition of verbal skills, and that infants can learn to express their needs using simple signs for common words such as "eat", "sleep", "more", "hug", "play", "cookie", "teddy bear", before they are able to produce understandable words. In this free video series, our expert will teach you about what baby sign language is, when to start using it, and how to be successful in its use. You'll also learn how it differs from American sign language, as well as developing routines that will help to teach babies to sign. With these videos, communicating with your baby can be a much easier process!

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Nicki with baby signs on behalf of Expert Village. And in this clip we're going to talk about what you're going to learn if you attend a sign say and play class. You'll meet Bebo the baby signs bear and he will help teach signs to your child when you're attending sign say and play class. In sign say and play class there are 6 topics that we cover one per week. The first one is mealtime, bedtime, bath time, there's getting dressed, at the park, and pets. So I'm going to demonstrate right now, actually Bebo is going to demonstrate one sign from each of the classes. So for bedtime, Bebo is going to show you light, light, you turn the light on and off. That's the bedtime sign. At mealtime you might want to learn eat. Bebo is hungry, he wants to eat. Next, bath time. At bath you're going to get in the water and make a W with your fingers and tap it on the side of your face; it's bath, water. Water in the bath. The next sign getting dressed in the getting dressed class, one of the fun things is hat. Children love taking hats off and some like to put them on too. Bebo is showing you the sign for hat. It's a good topic, anytime of the year; winter or summer, always wearing a hat. In the pets class you might want to learn the sign for kitty. Kitty, see look at the kitty Bebo. There's the kitty, Bebo sees a kitty. And when he's at the park, Bebo might want to tell me that he sees a bird. There's two different ways if you can do bird, you can either do the ASL sign like this or you can flap your arms like a bird. Babies find this a little easier sometimes than bringing their fingers to their mouth depending on the age and skills of the child. And those are some of the things that you'll learn when you come to the fun sign say and play classes. "