Yes, absolutely, baby sign language was purposely designed for “power mom’s!”  Non-sense, parents of all kinds are learning and teaching their babies to sign.  Why?  Because it makes their lives so much easier – that’s why.  Besides, signing with babies is fun and lets you open up your baby’s mind so you can have a look inside.

Baby sign language might wax and wane in popularity, but the fact is that there are so many legitimate benefits to signing with your baby, that it will endure the test of time.  For the fact that it makes your life easier, reduces toddler tantrums and spins off so many additional benefits like increased vocabulary and increased IQ means that it has staying power.  Never mind the fact that signing with your baby is easy and convenient!  Once you learn the basic skills of signing with your baby, you won’t need power course materials like DVD’s or CD’s or course manuals or what have you.  Once you know a sign and how best to teach your baby, all that is left is signing – straight up.  Just move your fingers, arms, and hands with the right orientation, movement, direction and handshape, and you’re doing something you and your baby will enjoy.

I always come full circle – signing is fun and if you do it for other reasons, you’re missing the point – full stop.  This is the real reason you should sign with your baby and the joy you get from exploring your baby’s mind can only be experienced first hand – and quite possibly only even one-on-one with your baby.  If you’re considering sign, stop, just do it, you won’t regret it one bit.

This is a common concern of parents who sign.  The real question, is would you prefer to teach a real living language to your baby, one they might continue with or one that is less rigid, comprised of some official signs and some made-up signs?

How strict you are depends on your goals with baby sign language and what you want from a signing program.  Keep in mind that signs you make up on your own won’t be recognized by anyone but yourself and whomever you teach.  If you teach ASL, then other people will understand your baby when they sign.  Teaching made-up signs takes just as long as teaching an official sign, although with a little less flexibility.  Some early sign programs used to make signs simpler for babies to do, but as more babies learned to sign over the years, it was discovered that babies could just as well make signs that adults did, only with a little less clarity.  The signs that weren’t perfect at first where “approximated” and with time and consistent modeling by parents, sign clarity improved.

The vast majority of the signs included in our sign language program are easy for a baby to do and represent a balance between difficulty and the relative interest your baby will have in using the word.  That is, words that your baby won’t really want to sign, have not been included and the words that remain, are the ones your baby can approximate with relative ease.

Just keep in mind that using an official sign language is a bit more difficult, but not so much so, that it’s worth making up signs specifically for babies.  ASL and other sign languages offer many benefits that can’t be offered by made-up signs.  Sign languages have specific rules and sentence structures, have many resources available and is common enough throughout your region that you are likely to come across other signers who enjoy the language as well.