Baby Hands Productions - Benefits of Signing

Benefits of Signing with Your Baby

_{Boost Your Baby's Self-Esteem and Confidence}
Success builds upon success. Your baby can communicate wants and needs sooner using signs, speak sooner with the help of signing, and learn more at an earlier age. The more you and your baby communicate, the greater the opportunity for positive interactions and this leads to higher self esteem and self confidence for your baby. Your baby is able to influence her world from a very young age by initiating and participating in conversations while her non-signing peers are limited to grunting, pointing and crying. Your baby is also likely to be more stable emotionally since she feels understood and validated long before she is able to speak. Using signs to express emotions such as happy, sad, mad and scared also helps your baby to recognize and label emotions in a constructive way.

_{Help Your Baby Attain a Higher IQ}
Research has also shown that babies who use signs to communicate pre-verbally score higher on IQ tests. In fact, studies have shown long term benefits as well. Children at the age of 8 who signed when they were babies scored, on average, 12 points higher on IQ tests when compared to their non-signing peers. Perhaps this is because signing allows babies to learn more about the world at an earlier age by getting feedback from their primary teachers - their parents. If your baby signs the word "cat" while looking at a "dog" you can easily explain the difference. Your baby has now been presented with a real world distinction and thereby given the opportunity to learn. A baby who cannot communicate what she is thinking cannot be offered such distinctions and consequently simply cannot learn at the same level as a baby who can.

_{Enhance Your Baby's Memory}
Parents and teachers have been using tactile and movement activities (kinesthetic anchors) with children of all ages for many years to enhance a child's ability to retain and recall information. Put simply, adding a touch and a movement to a word or song helps children remember the word or song. This is why almost every child in the US can recite the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "I'm a Little Teapot." This is also why most preschool performances add physical movement to the songs that they present. Movement is simply another way for a child to remember and later access information that they learn. The same advantages can be given to your baby by teaching your baby to sign.

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