I had just sat down in a leisure centre café to eat my lunch when I was approached by a toddler. She came right up to me (a stranger) and made a two-handed ball-fisted gesture. As a child development expert this got me interested. The toddler looked confident that I could understand her and would respond accordingly. I had recently come across Baby Sign Language in some research I had been doing and wondered whether she was signing to me. A brief conversation with her mother, who came to scoop her up, confirmed my hunch. Her daughter was just over 14 months old and they had been going to Baby Signing classes since she was 7 months old. By the way, as you probably guessed this little person, who could not use spoken language, was telling me that she wanted some of my food.
Teaching a baby to make signs before they can talk is becoming increasingly popular. We have known for a long time that babies make gestures to communicate. Parents who are sensitive to their infants can then respond to these messages. Classes for parents (mainly mothers) and their babies are springing up all over the UK. Babies can become frustrated when they are trying to communicate their needs and feelings and are not being understood. This inevitably leads to crying and tantrums. It is claimed that babies who can use a form of sign language are more able to communicate and less frustrated in their interactions.
Some research has been done on infants and gestures. Babies start pointing at around 3 to 5 months but it is not until they are about 9 months that they understand the meaning of the gesture i.e. that they are pointing at something. Research has also shown that an infant’s gesture use at 14 months is related to their vocabulary size at 42 months. This means that parents who gesture to their children when they are young increase their children’s gestural use and this has an effect on the child’s vocabulary in later years.
When a mother and child use gestural language it enriches their communication. If this communication is spontaneous then the mother becomes the interpreter – saying the words at the same time as using or translating their infant’s gesture. When parents and infants attend baby signing classes the parent is no longer the translator. The infant and parent have a shared gestural language. However the vocabulary is far greater. This is an exciting area of research. It gives us a window into how babies think and learn.
Last year I had the real pleasure of giving the main talk at a Baby Signing conference. I had prepared a presentation on ‘Gestures and Language from an Evolutionary Perspective’. I like my talks to be interactive so made it clear to the audience that I was happy to be interrupted with questions and comments. The audience, who consisted of Baby Sign instructors and practitioners, were both interested in the talk and keen to relate the topic to their own experiences.
One question that I get asked quite often when I am giving advice on child development issues at the Baby Show is ‘How will bringing my baby up in a bilingual household affect language development?’ Baby signing practitioners are convinced that baby signing helps language learning in two language households. We don’t have enough research on this yet but it could be a fascinating area of study. Gestures allow infants to point out their thoughts to their mothers/parents regardless of what language they speak. However parents who use gestural language for communication are showing their children how valuable language can be.
