Signing raises awareness about things around a baby. As you teach your baby to sign, watch how just by learning a label, that a baby suddenly finds something interesting. Now imagine suddenly taking this label away from your baby. What would happen? Your baby would go back to being blissfully unaware of its importance? Yes, most likely.
The same happens to adults, but in different ways. For the most part adults are aware of all the basics in life. However, when we learn something new, we begin to see things in a much different way. While at University I studied biology and learned to look at animals in a much different light. I learned that most complex animals are designed around a “ceolomic cavity.”
Chances are good that you have no idea what a ceolomic cavity is, which is going to help me illustrate my point about baby sign language perfectly. A ceolomic cavity refers to the tube inside our bodies where organ can freely move and grow independently of the outside body wall. Essentially, human bodies are tubes inside tubes. In the animal kingdom there are also animals with pseudocoelmate (not a true ceolom) and also acoelomate (no body cavity). When you think of the human body, picture an earthworm with arms and legs. Humans are nothing more than a tube of organs inside an exterior tube.
Having made you aware of the fact that humans are coelomate animals with a true coelom lined by muscle tissue on both sides – for a good long while, you’ll look at people a whole lot differently. You might find it so fascinating that humans are like giant earthworms who’s guts can be easily squeezed out of your body like a giant earthworm, that you might bring it up in conversation, point this out to your husband, wife or friend or crack a joke about it. Just by having a label for something you’ve known about and seen in drawings and images, painted in a new light, will spark a curiousity to talk about it in regular conversation. But even if you won’t talk about it, having the label will let you think about it.
Baby signing for your baby is no different. I had been feeding my son raisins for a good while and he liked them. After teaching him to sign RAISIN, he was obsessed with them. In fact, he would ask for RAISINS several times throughout the day and even bring me over to the pantry to get a refill. Because he learned the label for it, he learned how he could fit it into his life and what its purpose was. Also, because we are inherently social animals, we need a vocabulary in order to properly think about something in our lives. Baby signing gives your baby a head start in thinking about his world and how it relates to him. Teach him the words for things and he’ll begin to talk about them – it’s as simple as that! Teach him the words for things and he’ll also begin to think about them too.