We signed with Katherine, who didn't really talk until she was almost three. What that did and didn't achieve goes at the outset, because I went into it believing something that turned out not to be supported.
Does baby sign language work?
It works at the thing it obviously does, which is letting a baby tell you something before she can say it. It doesn't do the thing it's usually sold on.
The claim on most of the books and classes is that signing accelerates spoken language. That was tested properly in a randomized trial that followed babies from eight months, comparing families encouraged to gesture with families who weren't, and it found no advantage in language development for the signing group. A systematic review of the evidence had reached the same conclusion a few years earlier: the benefits are widely asserted and thinly supported.
So it won't make her talk sooner and it won't make her smarter, and anybody selling it on those grounds is going beyond what's known.
What it does do is real. A ten-month-old who can sign milk, more or all-done can tell you something specific at an age where the alternative is crying and your guessing. That reduced a measurable amount of frustration in our house, and with Katherine in particular it gave her a way to be understood during a stretch of years when being understood was hard.
For parents of late talkers, who will be reading this: signing didn't delay her speech, and no evidence suggests it does for anybody. The worry is common and it's unfounded. What signing did was carry her through the waiting.
Which sign language should you use?
Use the real one for your country, ASL, BSL, Auslan, or whichever is used where you live, and skip the proprietary systems invented for a book series. The reason is practical. A real sign language is standardized, it's what any deaf person or interpreter around you will recognize, there are free resources for it, and if your child ever needs it seriously she's already in the right system, whereas a branded scheme locks you into one publisher's vocabulary and is understood by nobody outside your kitchen. Signs aren't universal. ASL and BSL are different languages with different grammars, and BSL uses two hands for its alphabet where ASL uses one. Pick the one local to you and stay in it.
Don't worry about getting the handshape exactly right. Your baby will produce an approximation of your approximation, and it'll still work between you.
The rest of early communication
When to start, and when will they sign back
Start whenever you like. Expect nothing back for months.
Most families start somewhere between six and eight months, and most babies sign back somewhere between eight and twelve. The gap between those two is the part that catches people out, because it's long enough to feel like failure. Katherine signed back at eleven months, I think. I may be flattering myself.
The developmental reason is that pointing and gesturing arrive at around twelve months as a normal milestone regardless of any teaching. Signing is riding on a system that was coming anyway. You're giving it vocabulary.
You can begin earlier and it does no harm. You're talking to her constantly at that age in any case, and adding your hands costs nothing.
Which signs deserve starting with
Five or six, chosen for usefulness.
- Milk, which is the one most babies produce first because the motivation is obvious.
- More, which generalizes to food, play, songs and being thrown in the air, and is therefore the highest-value sign on the list.
- All done or finished, which ends a meal without a bowl going on the floor.
- Eat and drink, which separate two things that otherwise arrive as the same cry.
- Help, which is the one I'd add for any child who gets frustrated easily, and which was the best one we had.
- Later: sleep, hurt, please, and the names of whatever she's most interested in, dog, ball, book.
Add the ones she cares about. A sign for a specific toy will be learned faster than a sign for a category, because the motivation is doing the work.
What does a realistic first month look like
Nothing happening, and you feeling faintly ridiculous.
You sign milk every time you feed her, more every time you offer another spoonful, all done at the end of every meal, and she looks at you with mild interest and does none of it. That's week one through week eight, and it isn't a sign that it isn't working.
The rule that makes it stick is to always say the word while you sign it. This isn't silent communication. It's the word plus a gesture, and the speech is the part that counts most. Sign at the moment the thing is happening, keep her attention, and use the same few signs relentlessly and don't add more.
Then one day she does one, usually badly, usually at an inconvenient moment. Ours was Katherine signing more at about eleven months, at a restaurant, for a piece of bread.
What usually goes wrong
Almost always one of these five, and I've done four of them.
- Too many signs at once. Five is plenty. Twenty is a curriculum, and it'll be abandoned by March.
- Dropping it after three weeks because nothing has happened. Nothing was going to have happened.
- Signing without speaking, which removes the most valuable part.
- Only one adult doing it. If the other parent, or the grandparent doing weekdays, isn't signing too, she gets a fraction of the exposure and it doesn't take.
- Expecting it to solve tantrums. It reduces some frustration and a two-year-old will still lie on the floor of a supermarket, because that's a different problem.
The sixth, which is mine to own: expecting it to bring her speech forward. It didn't, and that was never what it was for. What it gave us was two years of understanding each other while we waited, and I'd do it again for that alone.
Asked most often
When should I start teaching my baby sign language?
Around six to eight months, once a baby is sitting and attending to objects with you. Starting earlier is harmless but produces nothing, since babies typically sign back somewhere between eight and twelve months.
Does baby sign language delay speech?
No. Signing while speaking doesn't delay talking, and the concern isn't supported by the evidence. Always say the word as you make the sign, speech and sign together is how it's meant to be used.
How many signs should I teach at once?
Five or six to begin with, chosen for how often they come up: milk, more, all done, eat, help. A small set used many times a day is learned far faster than a large set used occasionally.
Is sign language the same everywhere?
No. American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Auslan and others are distinct languages and aren't mutually intelligible. Most commercial baby-sign material uses ASL regardless of where it is sold, so learn the language used in your own country if that counts to you.
Does baby sign make children smarter?
There's no good evidence for lasting cognitive advantages. What signing reliably does is give a pre-verbal child a way to communicate and increase responsive back-and-forth interaction, which is valuable on its own terms.
The evidence
- Kirk, Howlett, Pine & Fletcher (2013), Child Development 84(2):574-590, To sign or not to sign? The impact of encouraging infants to gesture on infant language and maternal mind-mindedness
- Johnston, Durieux-Smith & Bloom (2005), First Language 25(2):235-251, Teaching gestural signs to infants to advance child development: a review of the evidence
- NHS. Help your baby learn to talk
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.