When I was pregnant with my first child, a good friend (who mastered in child psychology) told me that I just HAD to use sign language with my baby. At the time I had never heard of baby signing, and to be honest my first thoughts were in the line of 'ridiculous'.But after giving birth to a baby it seems that your whole perception of the world changes... Suddenly you find that breastfeeding in public is completely acceptable, kids in restaurants are amusing and the colour pink is not so bad after all. So you start reading about baby signing too. It was already very established in the US, but still pretty unknown in the UK.  I bought a book (Joseph Garcia's Complete Guide to Babysigning), and was pleasantly surprised to learn the positive facts about baby signing.

Baby signing why and how

1. Signing with your baby helps you to communicate with them much sooner than through speech, as they are able to make signs way before they are able to speak. You can share your baby's thoughts and observations long before he can talk. He can also express himself much better, so there is less frustration for the parent (Why are you crying? Are you hungry? No? Tired? No? Thirsty? No? etc.)

2. Signing with your baby apparently helps them develop their communication skills and language development; signing babies typically start to talk earlier and then continue to learn more quickly than their non-signing playmates.

3. Sign language goes above traditional spoken languages. It doesn't matter if the spoken language is French, Dutch or English - the sign is always the same.

4. Children love to learn sign language.My husband and I decided to give it a go and started with a couple of simple signs when our baby was about 10 months old (milk, eat, more, duck, sleep). No success. It was clear we weren't dealing with a prodigy here! But we kept using the signs (it's fun, and the signing quickly becomes second nature). And hallelujah - when our daughter was about one year old was using her first signs! And then, as if the penny had dropped, she wanted to learn more signs, and more; it was brilliant. We taught her obvious signs like hungry, bath, hat, baby, book and hear. But also less daily ones like penguin, cuddle, crocodile, cheese and hippo. It was so much fun, so cute and handy too - she would not only sign to us that she was thirsty, but also what exactly she wanted to drink!As soon as she started to speak though, at about 17 months I believe, words quickly took the place of signs (although for quite some time she was using both), and that was the end of signing in our little family.

But... maybe we shouldn't have stopped with the signing at all. Apparently, the British government recognised sign language as the fourth indigenous language of the country. It is taught at many schools, nurseries and educational establishments. If you think about it, it makes sense. We want our children to learn multiple languages, but often disregard this important one, which is the most fun one to learn and to use!I'm inclined to re-introduce sign language into our little family. Signing is cool -- whether you're hearing or not!

xxx Esther