The sign of the times

When Stephanie Curtin fed her seven-month-old daughter, Sepheria, she would touch her hand to her mouth and say the word “eat”. When Sepheria started to cry, Curtin would touch her hands to her chest and turn them, showing her hands were empty, and would ask her daughter, “All done?”

“I had read that babies could learn sign language well before they could speak,” Curtin said.  “I had been around a lot of other babies that seemed pretty frustrated and could not get their desires across, so I thought I would try it.”

Teaching babies American Sign Language (ASL) offers parents and hearing infants the ability to communicate with each other well before a baby can learn to speak.

Teaching the child sign language releases the frustration in the household Curtin explains. ASL makes it possible for both baby and parent to understand early “wants” and “needs” and to engage in learning at a very young age.

My Smart Hands, founded by Laura Berg, is an Internet company based in Toronto, offers classes to learn how to sign with their children.

“When it first started out it was more liberal, new age-y types of parents, but now I’m finding parents of all walks of life. Pediatric doctors, dentists, cancer surgeon…” Berg said.

The classes teach parents the alphabet and everyday words through songs and games. After the initial eight weeks, parents can continue to the second level of signing to add to the child’s vocabulary.

Curtin, knowing ASL from her job working with special needs children, taught her daughter the language through repetition started at the early age of six-and-a-half-months. Sepheria began fully signing back around seven-and-a-half-months. She learned 11 signs in total, such as circling a hand over a chest to say please, and squeezing a hand, as though it was milking a cow, for milk.

“There were definitely times where I thought maybe I was crazy,” Curtin said. “Just when I thought, okay, I am just driving us both nuts, she just took right to it like wildfire.”

Laura Berg started My Smart Hands to share the success of teaching her own daughter, Friesse, ASL.

Berg created a YouTube video of Friesse at the age of one, signing over 20 words, such as “Water”, “Eat”, “Mommy”, “Daddy” and “Apple”.

The video made it possible for parents to see the benefits of signing through Friesse’s own progress with the language.

Berg’s background as a certified teacher and her knowledge in curriculum development meant she could use ASL to help teach struggling children to read by teaching the manual alphabet. The association of sound to letter allowed children to put words together on their own.

Much like Curtin, Berg wanted a calmer household and a happy baby. She achieved this when 10-month-old Friesse kept throwing her food on the floor and making the sign for “more”.

“I knew she didn’t want more Cheerios, so I asked her what she wanted. She signed “more cheese.” Berg explained.

For over 35 years, the Hanen Centre, located in Toronto, has helped speech-delayed children. Instead of using sign language, the centre has speech-language pathologists, who use interactive, everyday play and the focus of the parent being the child’s teacher to motivate the child to communicate.

Executive director, Elaine Weitzman, feels the most important thing for a child is to develop naturally.

“I think what is important is what really helps a language develop. And its not teaching and its not counting, it is having fun and having interactions,” Weitzman said.

Weitzman understands why parents may feel inclined to teach their child ASL, but the developmental stages when a child cannot communicate are short-term. The long-term affects of learning sign language are still unknown.

“Sign language gives parents the sense of relieving frustration, but it’s not an evidence-based approach and we don’t recommend it as a learning tool at our centre,” Weitzman said.

Non-verbal communication is part of growing up, Weitzman explains. This stage of learning involves a child pointing at things and making simple sounds. When the child points across the street at a dog, the parent then comments. “Yes, look, there is a doggie across the street.” Eventually, that child will learn to say those words on her own.

“The truth is that language is a perfectly normal kind of unfolding developmental process. And with lots of interaction and lots of communication, it does unfold,” Weitzman said.

Berg strongly believes that teaching babies to sign gives them a head start in learning. She tells a skeptical parent that teaching their children sign language does not hold back regular speech, but rather gives them advantages.

“My daughter is four and still signs. She began to read at two-and-a-half and spell at three. I believe it was the attention that we (Berg and her husband) gave her and the sign language,” Berg said.