We live in an exciting knowledge-based economy where technology and education have made information more freely available to common folk than ever before.
The only problem is: Are we open-minded enough to harness the information made available to help us make educated decisions? One such piece of free valuable information:20 years of painstaking research has proven that children who use sign language have enhanced language, mental, social and emotional development, as compared to children who do not.
There is now a growing international movement which teaches babies to "talk" to you even before they can actually talk!Did you know that infants' gross motor skills (ability to grasp objects at 3-4 months) much develop faster than their fine motor skills (articulation).
As such, babies can actually use their hands to "communicate".
One fundamental reason for using sign language with your child, is not to miss out on positive two-way communication during the periods when babies' articulators are not fully formed yet.
Laura Dyer, Speech Pathologist, in her book "Look Who's Talking: How To Enhance Your Child's Language Development Starting At Birth", states that typically developing children ages 8 to 22 months benefit from learning sign language because these children can use signs to represent words that are too difficult for them to say.
Recent research has proven that teaching your baby sign language will provide dramatic benefits to both children and parents: INCREASED IQ Dr Linda Acredolo and Dr Susan Goodwyn compared babies who used sign with babies who had not.
Their research shows that the babies who used sign had a faster rate of cognitive development than babies who didn't sign.
Later, when the same two groups were compared at two years of age, the signers knew about fifty more spoken words than the other babies who hadn't learned sign.
At the age of three, the same signing group was found speaking and comprehending words at levels almost compared to what is normally expected at the age of four! They also scored well on tests of memory, mental development and fantasy play.
In fact, a ten-year study at the University of California at Davis found that seven-year-olds who signed as babies scored an average of twelve points higher on the standard IQ test than members of a control group who didn't sign as babies.
Marilyn Daniels, who has done extensive research on hearing children who have been taught sign language, explains that this is because there is increased neuron connectivity when babies use sign language.
As such, there is increased stimulation and brain activity resulting in denser brain development.
INCREASED VOCABULARY Marilyn also performed studies to determine whether adding sign language to the curriculum in pre-kindergarten classes would improve the students' comprehension of the English vocabulary.
Research concluded that the children who received sign instruction showed significant improvement in English vocabulary for students who received the sign language instruction.
In fact, the National Institute for Child Health & Human Development studied 140 families with eleven-month-old babies for two years.
They compared families who used signs with their babies with families who did not.
The children in the families that used signs performed better in all tests, scoring higher in intelligence tests, had larger vocabularies and engaged in more sophisticated play.
CONCLUSION Sure, learning sign language is going to take effort, especially for hearing adults.
However, after enduring nine arduous months of child-bearing, many parents will want to give the finest education to their children.
Teaching your children sign language when they are babies will help to lay a good foundation to their success in future.