How To Teach Sign Language

Teaching your baby to sign really is a process that parents should try to dedicate themselves to as much as possible. Here are some simple tips to remember as you get along.

1. Choose 6-8 Signs To Start

Babies can feasibly learn an infinite number of signs. Their brains are malleable and ready to go. Your adult brain however, is not. Learning new things can take time, and can be frustrating. That’s why it’s a good idea to start with 6-8 simple signs, instead of the entire dictionary. Begin with signs that you will have lots of opportunities to practice, such a mealtime signs (eat, drink, more, all done). Then practice these as much as you can, making sure you are totally comfortable with the signs before adding more into your repertoire.

Your child won’t learn signs by themselves, you need to find (and make if needed) opportunities for them to see signs being used by you and others around them in context. This might be as simple as you pointing out a dog and saying “Look, a DOG” while making the sign for dog, or it might be as organised as sitting down at mealtimes and running through the signs you want them to learn that are relevant to that context.

3. Always Say And Sign

When dealing with deaf or HOH (hard of hearing) children, signing while speaking is not so important. But when teaching hearing babies to sign it is important that you always speak the word at the same time as you sign. This helps babies to associate the context of the sign to the word in question. It also helps them later on when they start to speak for themselves, as they too can sign and speak, faster making connections with concepts they are already familiar with thanks to signing.

4. Know The Stages Of Learning

When you start teaching your child to sign, it’s important that you understand there’s a process to the learning journey. In the early days of the process you’re going to be the only one doing any signing, and your child will likely spend months totally unaware of what you are doing. But they will still be watching, and as time goes on they will start to recognise the signs, and associate their meanings. From there it’s a matter of them starting to mimic you (often requiring some guesswork as to what they’re signing), and then eventually sign on their own volition. It’s important that parents temper their expectations in their process, as communication takes time and nobody is perfect.

5. Make It Fun

Probably the most important thing about teaching your child baby sign language is to keep the learning process as fun as possible. Although they are learning, sign language lessons should be build into the day, around meal times, story book reading, and play. Forcing your child to sit down to learn signs will likely result in little retention of the signs. On the other hand including them in day-to-day play, and congratulating them on attempts to sign and signing successes as much as possible, creates a sense of fun that makes learning easy.