fullbabysign

Dr. Mom
Baby Sign & Speech Delay
Family Times
December 2006
--reprint rights available

Baby Sign Language, now found on the cover of Life and various
parenting magazines, has actually been around for quite some
time. I started signing with my first child nearly six years ago when
she was a just a preverbal squishy lazing in a bouncy chair. It was
an admirable enough experiment. But for her, words overcame
sign and soon she was off like a verbal rocket–and hasn’t slowed
down since.

When our son was born, it again seemed like a worthwhile
pastime. It helped fill that period with young babies where there
isn’t all that much interaction other than nurse, diaper, bathe,
repeat and one clamors to do something, anything that won’t be
completely undone in the next 45 minutes. And it was a fun
compliment to our usual bag of tricks, an activity that my
preschool daughter could join in on and I was actually learning
something, too. This came at a time when I desperately needed
reminding of my intellectual capabilities.

When the baby wasn’t even six months, my husband was
domestically deployed with the military. Unexpectedly and single-
handedly carrying the caregiver role for two preschoolers can
come with a hardy load of resentment and these emotions tend to
come out sideways. Over one of his weekend visits, I taught my
spouse the sign for “daddy” by forming his fingers into a big “L”
on his forehead. He’d hover over the bassinet enthusiastically
performing his sign saying “Daddy! Daddy!” I let that go on for
the better part of the year.

As time passed it became clear that unlike his sister, young Milo
was not taking off anything like a verbal rocket or even a wordy
scooter. And at nearly two, he was really a conversational crawler
saying only “hi” and “mama.” The term “speech delay” would
occasionally skirt across my mind, but I let myself be distracted by
sorting socks and other domestic realities.

Of course, there were, and continue to be, times that it is
wonderful to sign something rather than say it out loud. I visited a
friend living in Costa Rica creating the perfect opportunity for Milo
and I to end our very extended nursing saga. But when I emerged
in baggage claim in the crowed airport terminal, Milo saw me
coming down that escalator and signed with great passion,
“Momma! Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!” To which I signed back, “Momma
fell down; the breasts are broken.” Before I hit the bottom, he was
suggesting band-aids and kiss therapy through gesture, but soon
enough he got the picture. Broken was broken.

Through Milo’s months of silence, I consoled myself that he had
actually acquired a lot of signs, that he would occasionally sign
out an entire sentence with a subject, a verb and a direct object –
hell, I had caught him lying in sign to get another cookie. “More
more cookie sister eat,” he implored in gestures only to pop it into
his mouth as he rounded the corner. Although he was clearly
clever, it still bugged me that he hardly talked.

When my father came to visit though, he had no problem calling a
spade a spade: “Do you think all that sign may be hindering his
talking?” he asked. I thought I was going to be ill.

I paced my time waiting for our next well-baby visit with Dr.
Hobbs. I tried to be nonchalant when I brought up the speech
delay and that possibility that I may have broken the baby.
Hobbs assured me the time range for normal development is
actually pretty big and he compared sign language and talking to
crawling and walking.

“Infants and toddlers work with what works. And like people of all
sizes, they work on motivation,” said Dr. Hobbs. He explained
that when babies take those first few steps, they’ll often go back
to crawling because it’s easier. But as they see other children
walking faster than crawling, then they become motivated to learn
how to walk.

“Toddlers have more advanced motor skills than verbal, initially it’
s easier to sign and gesture than to talk. But soon they see
talking can be faster than their signing and then they continue to
be reinforced by everyone around them talking – and soon they’
re motivated.”

On afternoon Jason and I were singing happy birthday over the
telephone to a friend of ours. Milo toddled into the kitchen with a
look on his face that said, “I know that song.” He was signing
cookie, but seemed frustrated – it wasn’t quite right and out of
nowhere he blurted out the word, “Cake! Happy Cake!”

Milo found his motivation and the words haven’t stopped coming.




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