“In my generation, they just cried and we wondered what was wrong with them,” said Susan Peed, an independent certified instructor with Baby Signs®.

Peed certainly empathizes. And she’s here to help.
Since babies can’t say what’s bothering them, parents often become frustrated when they can’t figure out what’s bothering their child.

The frustration of not knowing why the baby is crying is something Peed says she can ease through sign language. The Baby Signs® program teaches babies gestures for communicating with their parents or caregivers, as way to “talk” before they can talk.

Peed is offering three separate parent-signing workshops through the Culpeper County Parks and Recreation Department from now until March.

The first one-hour introductory session is Saturday, with two more scheduled for Feb. 11 and March 25.

After the introductory session, parents are given a start-up kit and an opportunity to continue with Baby Signs® classes in the spring, during which time the baby attends with the parent for interactive sessions.

Life lessons
Entertaining an interest sparked by the “fledgling” hearing-impaired program at her church, Peed slowly knocked out the coursework to obtain her American Sign Language Career Studies certificate at Northern Virginia Community College.

Though her original intention was to become a tutor for hearing-impaired students, Peed became an advocate for baby sign language when her granddaughter was born.

When the baby reached six months old, Peed worked closely with her daughter-in-law to “flood” the baby with language. They would sign key words as they spoke them to her.

For instance, they might ask, “do you want milk?” while simultaneously giving the sign for “milk,” or, “look at the pretty flower,” while simultaneously giving the sign for “flower.”
“All of that pretend play is flooding them with language concepts,” Peed said. “The more you talk to them, the faster they learn.”

At 13-months-old, her granddaughter gave her first sign back.
Not for food, milk or sleep, said Peed, but for “bird.”
Through the window, her granddaughter saw a bird flying outside and she could then communicate with her granddaughter, “Yes, I see the bird.”

It was a proud moment for a grandmother and a mother, to see that seven months of signing was not in vain.

Within two months of her first sign, Peed’s granddaughter had 50 signs she used all the time. By the time she reached two years old, she was speaking in full sentences.

Now at 3 ½ years old, “we have people asking us when she starts first grade,” said Peed.

Reinforcement
Twenty years of research backs up Peed’s personal experience. The basis for the Baby Signs® program is on a long-term study funded by the National Institute of Health and conducted by Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr. Susan Goodwyn, authors of “Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk.”

Acredolo and Goodwyn randomly assigned more than 140 families to signing or non-signing groups, equivalent in sex, birth order, tendency to vocalize or verbalize words, parental education and parental income level.

The babies were tested using standardized measures. On average, 24-month-old signing babies were talking on a 27 or 28-month-old level (a three-month advantage over non-signing babies). By 36 months, signing babies were speaking like 47-month-olds (almost a year ahead of the non-signing babies).

“Babies are talking full sentences with a larger vocabulary than babies that don’t sign,” said Peed. “It really stimulates something in the brain to them learning faster.”

Bridging the gap
Peed said babies can understand concepts and what’s going on around them before they are able to develop the ability to coordinate the mouth, tongue and windpipes with actual words.

By using sign language babies can develop the tools needed to communicate before they are able to start using words.

Peed shared the example of a boy and his favorite clown doll. All day he toted his clown doll everywhere.

Seemingly inseparable, his mother let him carry it to bed. In the middle of the night, the mother woke up to her son crying hysterically. When she went to his room, he was pointing to the doll and giving the sign for “fear.”

“What if they hadn’t learned that sign?” Peed said. The mother and child could have become frustrated if she had tried giving the clown doll to him. But in this case, because they learned the sign together, she was able to remove the doll and calm her baby’s fear.

The program takes heat for not adhering completely to ASL, the language for 500,000 North Americans.

“We’ll take the hit on that one,” said Peed, whose focus is on doing what makes sense to the baby. Baby Signs® allows for modifications of ASL signs.

Peed believes in the program so much that she has been known to absorb the cost of some of her teaching materials.

“Profit is not my motivation,” said Peed. Her ultimate goal is to reach at-risk babies as well as spread Baby Signs® to daycare centers.

“There’s a whole tree of support that we could be giving the community that people don’t know about yet,” Peed said.

Universal signing would reinforce what the child learns at home as well as bridge the bi-lingual gap.

A child may become confused hearing “milk” at the day care center and “leche” at home, but the sign for “milk” is universal.

With signing practiced at the childcare facility, the child may make a connection between the languages sooner if he or she recognizes that the sign is the same for both words.

“The only way to believe in it,” said Peed, “is to do it.”

By Katie Dolac
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