Signing

As I've commented earlier, my family interests often overlap with my professional interests.  Here's a report on child language development that I just posted on our family blog, Ocean and Stars:

We are teaching Danny to use sign language for three reasons.  First, all children can grasp language before their oral musculature is sufficiently developed to master speech. Therefore teaching sign language is a way to boost language and communication skills while speech skills catch up.  Secondly, children with Down syndrome usually have additional speech delays due to auditory processing difficulties.  They tend to be better visual learners than auditory learners, so sign language plays to their strengths (again, as a bridge to learning speech, rather than as a permanent substitute for it).  Third, in Danny's case, we are teaching him multiple languages (English, Japanese, and Spanish), so signs can serve as a bridge to help him make links between spoken languages.

We have used signs sporadically since Danny has been about 5-6 months old, but it's only in the last month (at the age of 14 months) that he has started to sign himself.  His progress in signing is very interesting, in that first he starts to imitate a sign sporadically, and then he starts to use it more frequently and consistently, and then he shows signs of associating it with either it's sound or its meaning. He also sometimes makes slight adjustments to the signs so they are easier for him to make.  For example, his first sign was for his name, "Danny," which is a sign invented by our family (people generally invent signs for names) made by putting the ASL "d" (index finger extended up from a fist) up to the right side of his head.  Danny usually makes the sign with a fist, rather than extending the index finger, though occasionally he extends the finger too.  He also often makes it with two hands rather than one.  But he is doing more than imitating; he will sometimes make the sign when we say his name, even if we don't make the sign ourselves

Danny has so far made the following signs (in approximate order of learning and frequency):
Danny
more
eat
Daddy
Mommy
music

The last two signs were used for the first time on Wednesday (music) and Friday (Mommy), so he is learning signs regularly.  Of course he has not fully mastered these. He uses them sporadically and it's not clear how much he understands the meaning of them, but that seems to be coming gradually.

We are quite excited about continuing to teach him signs and it gives us a real fun focus for our communication with him.  By the way, for those of you interested in teaching signs to your baby, the company Signing Time just came out with a new set of videos and CDs especially for babies (called Baby Signing Time).  I haven't seen it yet, but I heard that the product features at least one baby signer with Down syndrome.  The company Sign With Your Baby also makes quality products.

Keiko and I took earlier took some private lessons in Signing Exact English (SEE), a sign language that bases much of its vocabulary on ESL but has further developed the vocabulary and altered/expanded the syntax to develop a signing system that closely parallels English. However, at least at this stage, that wasn't really necessary.  We are just teaching basic signs to Danny, or simple combinations of signs (e.g., "more eat," "more music"), so ASL signs are fine.  ASL signs have the additional advantage of being more broadly known and used, so other adults (therapists, child care workers) are more likely to know them and they are covered in more common instructional materials (such as from the two companies listed above.)

Anybody else out there teaching signing to your children?