Hurwitz, not deaf herself, said American Sign Language (ASL) offers the same benefits that any second language would offer to infants. But as she answers questions about the new trend of hearing parents teaching hearing children to sign, she cannot help but think about another issue that is a hot topic in the deaf community.

She is quiet for a moment, and then asks: “It’s so interesting … why there are so many people who feel deaf babies shouldn’t sign? If it’s okay for hearing children to sign, then why isn’t it okay for deaf children?

“The more we stimulate children and encourage communication, the better off we are going to be,” Hurwitz said.

Hurwitz was referring to controversy that has been going on for years regarding whether deaf and hearing-impaired people should be steered away from using sign language and instead forced to only communicate through lip-reading and speech therapy. As technology increasingly offers options to improve hearing, the controversy continues.

“The point is those critics say that if you sign with a baby they won’t learn to talk. But it’s not going to stop them from talking,” Hurwitz said. “And there also are those who would say why stop a deaf child from talking if they have access to hearing?”

That said, she said the baby sign language trend over the last few years is something to be celebrated, and she hoped it would represent another trend toward recognizing American Sign Language as a legitimate second language.

Dr. Sam Slike, curriculum coordinator in the education of the deaf and hard of hearing program at Bloomsburg University, said the broad interest in sign language is a fairly recent phenomenon but one that he sees catching on.

Slike is one of only a handful of college professors in Pennsylvania who train teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. He said Bloomsburg University has seen more students coming to college with at least a year of high school ASL under their belts.

“We’ve seen a marked increase,” Slike said. “The interest is there and the students are getting foreign language credit in their high schools.”

Slike noted that ASL is a true, full language with its own syntax and order that is different from spoken English. Whereas most baby sign language courses teach a sort of slang ASL, Slike said true ASL is a rich language.

For example, the sign for milk is like pulling on the udder of a cow.
“It is easier to do than mouth movements, as a supplement to communication instead of pointing,” Slike said. “But a deaf person would sign ‘Would you like milk?’ not just the sign for ‘milk.’ ”

Dupont resident Billie Angrisano has no children and is not deaf, but her sisters-in-law are deaf. Angrisano wanted to be able to communicate with her family, including her niece, so she called the Scranton School for the Deaf and asked to take hearing adults classes.

“I attended a few of them and eventually it became no problem at all to communicate in ASL. For a while, I had no idea what they were saying,” Angrisano said.

Now, she plans to teach ASL at After School Phonics, Kingston.

“It’s something parents really shouldn’t abandon after their child learns to speak. It’s something to keep up on,” Angrisano said.

Hurwitz expressed the same hope that more people would see the positive aspects of ASL as a second language.

“It’s interesting to see little children who are deaf, with deaf parents. Maybe the mommy is the only one who understands a certain sign the child does,” Hurwitz said, much in the way a hearing child who first starts to speak sometimes is only truly understood by their hearing parents. “The language development is similar no matter what the language is.”

A variety of baby sign language courses are trademarked. Child development experts Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr. Susan Goodwyn, both of whom founded the baby sign language program being offered locally at After School Phonics, Kingston, and Gymboree, Wilkes-Barre, conducted research through the National Institutes of Health that they say proved that using sign language with babies had a significantly positive impact on their language development and overall intellectual development. They found that by age 7 and 8, children who had learned sign language as infants had a mean IQ 12 points higher than those who had not learned sign language.

By Dawn Zera
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/living/13979138.htm