Why use sign language with hearing infants and toddlers?
Using sign language with hearing infants and toddlers enables adults to facilitate learning and communication with young children. We strongly advocate the use of American Sign Language signs as the best way to facilitate spoken language and conceptual development in hearing infants and toddlers. Signs used with young children are best thought of as organized gestures that accompany spoken language. These gestures highlight whatever aspects of an object, idea, or action that adults simultaneously are commenting on or labeling through speech. All hearing children begin the journey toward spoken language development at birth. However, it takes children between 12 to 24 months to begin “mastering” the sound and intonation patterns of English, and then to begin applying this mastery to the production of basic words and sentences. In contrast, signing takes advantage of natural movements that all children make. And because hearing children tend to use only a handful of handshapes and moveme
