A gesture for the baby

The new baby talk
TRALEE PEARCE

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Dancer Julia Aplin has been home from rehearsal with her baby, Jenny,
for less than an hour when a visitor appears at the door. Jenny
squishes her hand together and brushes her chin, then nuzzles her head
into Ms. Aplin's neck.

"Mommy milk?" asks Ms. Aplin, 37, replaying the gestures back to
11-month-old Jenny.

Neither Ms. Alpin nor Jenny are hearing-impaired. They are among a
growing number of families who use sign language with their pre-verbal
babies.

And in this case Jenny didn't want to breastfeed, she wanted a cuddle.

"I had read about baby sign language in a magazine and I wanted to try
it because I could tell she was getting frustrated not being able to
talk," says Ms. Aplin, fixing a cup of ginger tea in the kitchen. "And
although we don't practise much, it is something special we have
between us."

It's also an intoxicating window into a budding personality.

Ms. Aplin says that when Jenny first figured out the sign for milk --
yes, picture one hand milking a cow -- she would do it repeatedly, even
when she didn't want to be fed, filled with glee that she was
communicating.

This kind of experience has pushed baby sign language from a grassroots
movement to the mainstream in the 10 years since American psychologists
Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn wrote a seminal book on the topic,
Baby Signs: How To Talk with your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk.

Back then, they dispelled the fear that using sign language might stunt
a baby's speech development.

"What crawling is to walking, signing is to talking," says Ms.
Acredolo, now a professor emerita at the University of California,
Davis. "It incites them to communicate better. There is no downside."

Babies learning sign language will generally start signing at nine to
12 months, a few months before they start talking (anywhere in the
12-to-18-month time frame). The promise of opening up that possible
three-month gap is enticing, as is equipping children with a language
they can use with the hearing impaired or others who use sign language
to communicate.

"It's growing by leaps and bounds," Ms. Acredolo says. "In one
generation, it'll be what everyone wants to do."

For an idea of just how big baby signing is getting in Canada, take
WeeHands, the brainchild of Sara Bingham -- and the course Ms. Aplin
and Jenny took. The Whitby, Ont., speech and language therapist was
familiar with American Sign Language (some baby signing programs use a
modified ASL). After spending a lot of time sitting on her hands and
resisting the urge to sign through nursery rhymes in baby classes, she
started teaching her son, Joshua, to sign at six months of age.

In 2001, she started her company, WeeHands, giving classes in her
living room. She remembers the first parenting trade show where she set
up a booth.

"People would look at the sign and walk around me, thinking it was only
for special-needs kids."

Now, she has 27 instructors, who have taught close to 4,000 families to
sign across Ontario. She's licensed four instructors in the United
States and has imminent plans for a program in Japan and Australia. (In
Japan, WeeHands will continue to be taught in English and ASL; in
Australia, ASL will be "translated" into that country's AUSLAN sign
language.)

"Now, after the baby-sign-language scene in Meet the Fockers, [where
Robert de Niro signs to an infant with comic success], people want to
know how fast they can start." As early as four months of age, she
says.

Amy Halpenny, the founder of Ella Centre for Pregnancy and Parenting in
Toronto, admits she was intrigued by the Hollywood-friendly
baby-signing trend -- Julia Roberts and Debra Messing are reported fans
-- when she opened in 2004, so she immediately teamed up with WeeHands
to offer classes.

"But to me, it's not a passing fancy," she says of the popular class.
"It's not for everyone. It's very specialized learning."

Nancy Foster, who teaches a WeeHands class Tuesdays at the Ella Centre,
is full of anecdotes about babies using their limited vocabularies to
describe the world as they see it. She knew a pre-verbal baby who, upon
seeing a swimming pool, signed the words for "big" and "bath." In
addition to being endearingly cute, it was also a chance for the parent
to teach both the verbal and signed words for swimming pool.

During a class this week, seven thirtysomething moms sit in a circle
with their babies -- most of them about eight months old -- either on
their laps or playing quietly on a mat in a cheerful room at the Ella
Centre.

Ms. Foster is checking to see if the mothers have done their homework.

"Ball. Doll. Phone. Teddy bear." They all say the words and sign them
to their babies, if they're watching, and to each other. Some are
obvious, like the two-handed I'm-holding-a-ball sign; others are
thoughtful, like the nose-touch gesture for doll.

After one tune, smiley baby Paul, sitting to the left of Ms. Foster,
butts his two fists together. The sign for more. Everyone squeals with
delight -- and Paul beams.

"That's a big one -- more food," says another mom, Toni Giancola.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular signs include the one for milk. When
the group sings and signs a song called Please May I Have More Milk?
the babies really perk up and watch, instead of chewing on plastic
toys, as they seem fond of doing.

"We use what's motivating," Ms. Foster says later.

After the class, Nadine Cannata says her big-eyed baby, Matthew,
"laughs when I do the sign for milk at home. So does my husband."

Other families take a do-it-yourself approach. Jennifer Robinson of
Orangeville, Ont., hasn't taken any formal training, but uses sign
language with her 15-month-old baby, Lauren.

"I've always known the sign for 'milk' and 'more,' " the 32-year-old
says. "Friends of my parents taught their daughter, who has Down
syndrome, those signs because she was so late to talk."

Now, her daughter makes the sign for "more," while saying "mo." After
reading a few articles on the topic, Ms. Robinson worked signs into
their early "conversations."

"It didn't even feel like a lot of effort," she says. "Lauren caught
onto 'milk' quite quickly, and it was as exciting as her saying her
first word! Then she could tell me, without just crying, that she
wanted milk. I started out by saying "milk" and making the sign before
breastfeeding her. Before I knew it, she was telling me when she was
ready."

In addition to easing parent-child communication, Ms. Robinson says
watching her daughter beam when she mastered each sign was a bonus.
"Lauren was so obviously proud of herself."

And experts say this sense of glee -- not a higher IQ, which has been
suggested by some studies, and certainly not parental bragging rights
-- should be the inspiration.

Ms. Bingham says baby signing shouldn't be about hitting benchmarks;
her son started signing at nine months, and her daughter at 11 months.
Ms. Halpenny also says she discourages comparing size of vocabulary.

"I don't want parents having anxiety about what's coming next. There
should be no expectation or pressure."

There are some experts who still question the benefits of these
classes. In a recent issue of the U.K. journal of the Royal College of
Speech and Language Therapists, some members suggested baby sign
language was only "preying on middle-class worries."

Nevertheless, other academics are making baby signing a hot area of
academic research. Emily Thom, a developmental-psychology graduate
student and researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles,
was inspired when observing signing babies in the university's
preschool.

"At first it shocked me because I didn't know what they were doing,"
she says. "It ended up being really effective."

She plans to build on studies that have shown correlations between baby
sign language and a child's higher verbal ability.

"I think this small phenomenon is going to show us quite a bit about
general language development and how we learn. I've seen some of the
benefits in the classroom and now in the laboratory as well.

"There are robust findings alone that just paying attention to language
and labelling and the amount of time spent with the child can boost
language development. It's an interesting thing to unpack."

Back at Ms. Aplin's house, mom and daughter have been nattering away
about cereal, water and various toys -- often with Ms. Aplin talking
and Jenny nodding. But Jenny seems to have the signal for ball down
pat, even if she has trouble finding it.

And when the visitor goes to leave, there's no mistaking the universal
goodbye signal.

Tralee Pearce is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail.

Sign sites

http://www.weehands.com

The Canadian site run by WeeHands, a successful five-year American Sign
Language-based program offered in Ontario, Yellowknife and the United
States. Japan and Australia are soon to come.

http://www.signingbaby.com

An American site, with cute-as-pie photos of signing kids and excellent
FAQs.

http://www.ellacentre.com

The Toronto parenting centre offers WeeHands classes among other
developmental courses

http://www.commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

An ASL browser, with a video dictionary: Click on a word and watch a
person sign it back to you.

http://www.handspeak.com

A for-fee subscription service for ASL.

-- Tralee Pearce

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