To Sign or Not to Sign

A few years ago, it became stylish to teach babies how to communicate with sign language. Teaching babies how to sign has grown in popularity, and many are debating over whether sign language is beneficial, innocuous, or harmful.

It is true that babies can learn sign language effectively. Toddlers are even better at it. The benefit of a child being able to sign is that he or she will be able to communicate long before he or she could possibly speak. The child may also gain an early understanding of the interactive nature of communication. Clearly, these are positive aspects of teaching a child to sign.

Teaching a child to sign has its negatives, however. If a child can effectively communicate wants and needs through sign language, he or she will have little to no incentive to speak. Learning to speak is an extremely difficult task. The child has to experiment over and over to learn how to manipulate the mouth to make proper sounds. There is no incentive to struggle with the pronunciation of the word milk when one can just hold out a hand and squeeze the fist to make the sign for milk.

Learning to speak is a highly important developmental milestone. Unfortunately, some children have a great deal of trouble learning to speak. A delay in speech skills may be a small problem at first; however, the problem compounds rapidly as the child ages and approaches more advanced developmental steps. Since it is possible that relying on sign language may delay a child’s speech development skills, the parent should carefully consider whether the benefits of signing are outweighed by the potential risks.