Rather than stomping her feet and throwing a hissy fit, Jacqueline simply brings her tiny little hands together and makes the hand-sign for her favorite food.

"She used to be really frustrated because she couldn't communicate what she wanted. She'd throw tantrums and start hitting because she couldn't say the word. Now she knows how to tell me when she wants something," says Jacqueline's mother Tina Smith of Livermore.

Smith has since learned that sometimes it's best to just let the fingers do the talking. Baby sign language, a popular parenting tool, has taken baby talk to a whole new level, offering an alternative avenue for parents to communicate with their pre-verbal children.

Books like "Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk" by Linda Acredolo, Susan Goodwyn and Douglas Abrams make it easy for parents to learn to sign from home, but there are also classes popping up around the Bay Area like Baby Signs taught by Suzanne Harkless and Andra Lekich in the Albany, El Cerrito and Lafayette areas.

Instead of playing the 'What Does Baby Want?' guessing game and riding out the tot's tantrums, Smith opted for a proactive solution and looked into the baby sign language class Signing Smart.

"We were doing a lot of songs like the 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' that incorporated hand movements. She was picking up things pretty quickly and the hand movements were helping her learn the songs, so I decided to try this out and see if it would help," says Smith.

Signing Smart is a sign language program that helps hearing children think about and learn language at an early age. The program was developed by Michelle Anthony and Reyna Lindert, who met at the University of California, Berkeley, while pursuing their doctorates in developmental psychology.

Anthony and Lindert have trained a handful instructors in their methods around the Bay Area, including Pacifica, Berkeley and the class Smith found in Pleasanton. For a list of trained teachers, visit http://www.wideeyedlearning.com.

When Anthony and Lindert's children were babies they found that there was a lack of language resources to help parents communicate using sign language with their children at a very young age, and so Signing Smart was created.

"This came from a very personal place for both of us. She had a baby and I had a baby, and despite all the training and resources out there we couldn't find something that was simple and fun. The last thing a parent needs is another thing that feels like work. We wanted to develop something that was fun and easy for parents and would give them the tools to help their kids learn in a playful way," says Anthony.

Anthony and Lindert designed a parent-child play class geared toward children 6 months to 2 years of age. It uses sign language in songs, games and activities like reading to stimulate learning and bonding between child and parent.

At the Where Music Begins studio in Pleasanton mother-daughter team Cathy and Lindy Hirata teach the 10-week Signing Smart program. The licensed instructors begin the hour-long class with a welcome song. Wearing pink gloves, they each slip their hands through a stuffed bear and sign the words as they sing. The parents sign along as the children sit wide-eyed, occasionally fiddling with their fingers, but not until a familiar picture book is brought out does Jacqueline start signing.

Putting her pointer finger and thumb together like a beak of a bird, Smith asks, "What's that? Is that a bird?," and Jacqueline responds both verbally and with the sign for bird.

"From day one we talk to parents about strategies to help them bring signs into their child's world. Whether it's while reading a book with them or asking them if they want more milk, once the parents learn the signs they can facilitate the learning process with their child at home," says Cathy Hirata.

But how do you know little Jacqueline really knows the sign for bird and isn't just copying her mommy?

"The same can be said for when a child says 'Da-da,' how do you know they're really saying 'Daddy?' It's an age-old question of language acquisition," says Anthony. "But after a while, what the child is doing stops being sucking and starts being the sign for eat. You have to look at the intention and context of the situation. Once a child learns that they can use their hands in all these different ways to communicate what they want, they are going to do it."

Learning the signs can be a little tricky at first. Noriko Kanatani of Pleasanton says it's been difficult for her to teach her 17-month-old daughter Sophia.

"It's hard for me to memorize everything, so her signs aren't perfect. But I can tell when she's trying to tell me something like she sees bubbles or that she's hungry," says Kanatani.

Even though parents like Smith and Kanatani have been pleased with the Signing Smart program, there are naysayers who insist the course is for demanding parents and that teaching nondisabled children sign language may hinder speech development.

However, research has shown that teaching sign language to hearing children can actually help accelerate verbal language development, increase long-term learning, reduce tantrums and even increase IQ.

"That breaks my heart because it is 100 percent untrue," says Anthony, referring to the skeptics. "There has never been any study to show a delay. The structure of Signing Smart facilitates spoken word development. We encourage parents to say the word, tap their mouth and then sign. Even just knowing a few signs puts a child well ahead of the curve, they're not going to struggle and become frustrated when they can't communicate what they want verbally."

Anthony and Lindert say their research has found that teaching sign language to hearing infants actually benefits a child's language development. They say that Signing Smart children at the age of 18 months old use an average of 79 signs and 102 spoken words, versus 10 to 50 words non-signing children use.

"I don't know how many she's supposed to know, I think she knows about 20 or 30 signs right now. She's picked up things so quickly. It's really great," says Smith, Jacqueline's mother. "She's signing and saying words and it's helped her a lot. She doesn't struggle as much when she can't find the right word because she can tell me what she wants through the signs."

By Christina Troup
http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_3615963