Photo by A.M. Kuchling

Today’s the last day of our special series dedicated to sign language and how it can be used as a bridge between languages for all those of us raising our children bilingual.

As promised, we wanted to put together a list of useful links and resources related to baby sign language. We hope you take the time to explore all these for they all offer different kinds of information, including visual dictionaries (so you can learn any and all the signs you can think of), classes and products, and articles written about the benefits of sign language.

ASL University – An online curriculum resource for American Sign Language students, instructors, interpreters, and parents of deaf children.

American Sign Language Browser – Michigan State University’s ASL Browser web site, an online American Sign Language (ASL) browser where you can look up video of thousands of ASL signs and learn interesting things about them.

Signing Savvy – Contains several thousand high resolution videos of American Sign Language (ASL) signs, fingerspelled words, and other common signs used within the United States and Canada.

Sign2Me – The first company ever to develop and offer Baby Sign Language resources using only true-to-ASL signs.

Baby Signs – Authors Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr. Susan Goodwyn are devoted to helping parents throughout the world experience the many positive benefits that signing with infants can bring.

Time to Sign – Dedicated to supporting effective and meaningful communications for children, families, care givers, and business teaching American Sign Language in a fun and educational way.

Signing with Babies and Children – Everything there is to know (about American Sign Language) and ALL in one place…

Boca Beth – Bilingual educator and one of our most fervent supporter, Beth Butler, collaborated with Lillian Hubler, founder of Time to Sign, in two American Sign Language books that go hand in hand with two of her bilingual music CDs.

Baby Sign Language Basics – Website belonging to Monta Briant, the ASL author and instructor, who so kindly answered all my questions related to signing and bilingualism and donatet two copies of her Baby Sign Language Basics book for us to give away to two lucky readers!

And, you have until tonight at midnight EST to enter to win. For more info, go here!

Many thanks to those who suggested some of the links above and, as usual, please feel free to share if you know of any others.

Photo by gfpeck

The following is a guest post by fellow mamá bloguera, Silvia M, who is raising two bilingual children using the OPOL method in California. If you’d like to know more about Silvia, you can find her blogging here: Mama Latina Tips.

When my firstborn was a few months old, I joined a mom’s group looking for some adult conversation and support. In one of our meetings, we watched the video “Sign with your baby” by Joseph Garcia and I fell in love with the idea of communicating with my baby before he could speak. I talked to my husband, who knew a little bit of American Sign Language (ASL), and together we decided to give it a try.

I started signing with my first son when he was 8 months old, but after two months, I didn’t see much progress, so I stopped. Then, after taking a couple of months off, I started over when he was one year old. A month later, I noticed that every time I signed and said leche or when my husband signed and said milk, my son knew exactly what we both were talking about. I was visiting my parents when my 13 month old son signed for the first time! Within a couple of weeks, he was signing leche, más, comer and agua. And from there he learned more and more signs, like galleta, flor, libro, zapatos, dormir, and ayuda. It was a fascinating process to watch, and my baby looked so cute signing with his perfect hands. Sometimes he would make up his own signs or change to an easier version of the original, which I thought was pretty clever. Also, I noticed a decrease in frustration for both of us when we tried to communicate.

Silvia M.

After he learned more and more signs he started “talking” with them, by this I mean he started signing sentences like, “more milk please.” But what amazed me most is it didn’t matter which language we used (English with my husband or Spanish with me), my son would know the sign, which I thought was pretty sophisticated for such a small child, and it made me realize how powerful small children’s minds can be. He was learning three languages at once!

At some point, I became concerned I might delay my child’s language development if I continued using signs, considering that he was two and a half and he didn’t verbalize more than mamá, papá, bye and ball. However, my concerns lessened after I read a little more about language acquisition and realized that in some cases multilingual babies may take a little bit more time to decode all the different languages. Sure enough, after a short while, as he started to use spoken words more, he stopped using the signs for those words, except when he really wanted to emphasize something, in which case he would use the spoken word and the sign together, as in: MAS mamá!

With my second child the process has been different. He is taking even longer to sign, (sigh) but he is doing it! And I feel very proud of him.  He made his first sign at 18 months but in just one month he learned nine more. Now even my older son is using his signs again to help his little brother Isn’t that amazing?

Here are some tips based on my experience:

1. It is recommended to start when your baby is around 8 months, but it’s never to late to start. Your baby will benefit even if he is one and a half or two.

2. Be patient, it takes a lot of repetition and commitment, but the first time you see your baby making a sign you will feel very proud for sticking with it.

3. Try to get books or videos about baby signing, usually they come with illustrations to show you the signs, and videos offer great help to see the movement. Check your library.

4. Take advantage of signing opportunities, like when you hear a bird, and you notice your baby is listening to it, sign and say pájaro, when he goes and touches a flower, you sign and say flor, etc. You will be amazed how many times a day you can introduce a new sign.

5. And don’t forget to have fun! This process doesn’t have to be a chore, it is just a great way to “talk” to your baby. Enjoy!

Finally, I have to say that as a family using the OPOL method, signing with our babies has been a great way to “link” Spanish and English in our house. I believe that using basic ASL as one “universal language” helps my family to communicate easily with our toddler and helps my kids to expand their comprehension of both languages. I definitely would recommend any OPOL family give it a try.

You still have a chance to win one of two copies of Monta Briant’s book, Baby Sign Language Basics. Go here for more info on how you can be one of the winners!

Photo by gfpeck

Yesterday Roxana kicked off the week with an introduction to a four-part series we’ve prepared on baby sign language, or ASL, as a bridge connecting two languages.  Teaching sign language to your baby is the equivalent of teaching him an additional language.  For your child to fully be able to communicate in ASL it requires a strong commitment and dedication from the parents, like learning any second or more language does.  However, and especially for families using the one parent-one language method,  learning the basics of ASL to use as common ground between all in the family is very helpful.

Simona Montanari, Ph. D.

Today’s Ask an Expert question is specifically about this topic.  Simona Montanari, Ph. D. tells us in more detail, and from an expert’s point of view, why using ASL is beneficial for OPOL families. The question was sent by Jason, a high school Spanish teacher using the OPOL method to raise a bilingual son.

Is Baby Sign Language Helpful to Second Language Acquisition?

I am a high school Spanish teacher who is trying to do the one parent-one language method with my six month old son. I was wondering if baby sign language would hinder, help, or otherwise, Spanish language acquisition?

Dear Jason,

You can rest assured: teaching your child baby sign language will not hinder his Spanish-English bilingual development. In fact, it might help it.

First of all, baby sign language is not like regular sign language in that it is incomplete. You are not signing to your child in full sentences, but you are only teaching him basic words that he may need to communicate, such as “hungry”, “thirsty”, “more”, “please”, and “thank you.” These signs are from the American Sign Language dictionary but they have no morphology attached to it – no affixes or inflections as found in ASL – so they are simple enough for a child to imitate. In addition, hand gestures are much easier for a baby to pick up than spoken words, which require precise tongue and lip movements, so children can use baby signs to convey their needs to their parents before they have words.

This is where the benefits of baby sign language are the most obvious: signing can help children alleviate the frustration of the inability to communicate, and can boost babies’ feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment. There is no evidence to suggest that babies who are taught to sign are in any way hindered in language development. It is actually believed, as noted by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, authors of Baby Signs: How to Talk to Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, that children who are taught to sign learn to speak sooner than those who are not, and, because they have more experience with language (sign and spoken), they end up with a better grasp of language and better communication skills that those of non-signing children. In sum, baby sign language will help bi/multlingualism, in addition to stimulating intellectual development and providing a strong foundation for early literacy.

So you can go ahead and keep using signs, Spanish, and English with your baby. If you are consistent, your child will initially use only signs to tell you what he wants; as time goes on, he will learn words and will use both words and signs together. Finally, he will gradually drop signs and use only words. Of course if you are teaching your child ASL and not just single signs, then your baby will go on to learn ASL and will be trilingual in Spanish-English and ASL.

Don’t forget we’re giving away two copies of Monta Briant’s book, Baby Sign Language Basics. Go here for more info on how you can be one of the winners!

Make sure you’re subscribed to our free feed either by RSS or email so you don’t miss out on the rest of this highly informative and useful week.

Photo by Indiewench

I guess I never really made the correlation, but as I meet more people raising their children bilingual and I read more about the whole concept, it truly makes a lot of sense that those who use the OPOL (one parent-one language) method, have found it incredibly beneficial to also teach their children sign language.

Recently, we dedicated a whole week to the topic of the OPOL method since we realized this is the one the majority of you are using. We were pretty happy with the results. Thanks to your feedback, which was amazing, we realized there are many topics we really need to concentrate on – and one of them is using sign language as a bridge between two other languages.

In case you don’t recall, in our guest post during OPOL Week, AnaGloria Rodriguez, who is raising two bilingual (English/Spanish) children mentioned the usage of sign language by saying this:

“We learned ASL so that the family would have one language in common.”

This statement pretty much summarizes the reason why so many parents using the OPOL method also use baby sign language.

A Bridge Between Two Languages

According to Monta Briant – author of Baby Sign Language Basics and Sign, Sing, and Play!- who has been teaching sign language to children and their parents since 2001, it makes sense to many parents raising bilingual children because it connects both languages.

Monta Briant

“It helps them realize that there is more than one way to say the same thing,” she said. “It really helps sort out that leche and milk mean the same things, thanks to the solid representation made through signing.”

The beauty of the whole concept is that there is only one sign that means milk or leche in sign language. It is important, however, to point out that there are many variations of sign language depending on the country and region where it is used. Since we live in the U.S., we’re only really talking about American Sign Language (ASL).

“Sign language makes it easier to learn both languages because it expands on what every baby – and adult – already does naturally,” Briant explained. “Research has actually shown that a baby being raised bilingual will learn both languages quicker when also using sign language. It’s just very natural for babies.”

One common concern that parents have – which really is a concern of parents considering bilingualism to raise their children no matter what combination of languages they plan on using, and ASL is considered a language – is that their children will get confused. As we’ve mentioned in the past, this is a myth and it needs to be debunked!

Briant, who’s raising bilingual children herself, said a lot of parents also worry that using sign language with their babies will actually delay their speech development – another common misconception related to raising bilingual kids.

“Sign language actually promotes and increases speech development,” she said. “Many parents have said to me: ‘If they can use their hands (to communicate) why would they bother to talk?’ But if you think about it, talking is a lot easier than signing. Plus, why then would speech language pathologists use sign language as part of therapy for children with delayed speech?”

It usually goes back to uninformed people making erroneous assumptions. If you’ve been following SpanglishBaby for a while, you know all of us in this bilingual journey face an uphill battle when it comes to comments made by those unfamiliar with this subject.

Another incredible benefit of using sign language, according to Briant, is that as children get older and maybe they forget a word here and there in the minority language, signing can be used as a hint to trigger their memory – instead of the highly discouraged method of simply translating.

Coming Up…

Following is a sneak peek at what we’ve prepared for the rest of the week. As always, we hope you find this info useful and remember we encourage you to leave comments, questions or to just share your own experiences. After all, this is the best way for all of us to learn!

• TUESDAY – Our weekly Ask an Expert series with a question specifically related to sign language and raising bilingual kids answer by Simona Montanari, one of our very own experts.
• WEDNESDAY – A guest post from one of our loyal readers – and a fellow mamá bloguera. She will tell us about her own journey using sign language to help in the process of raising her two bilingual children. You won’t want to miss this one!
• THURSDAY - A list of resources/articles/websites compiled specifically for those of you using or thinking about using sign language to raise your children bilingual.

G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y

We are so grateful to Monta Briant who has been kind enough to give us two copies of her book, Baby Sign Language Basics, one in English and one in Spanish, so we can give away to two lucky winners. All you have to do is leave us a comment sharing something about using sign language to raise bilingual kids, whether it be a question, a concern, a challenge, a tip, pros/cons, an anecdote, anything that will add to the online conversation about this topic.

This giveaway will end Thursday, Aug. 6th at midnight EST. Make sure you’re subscribed either by RSS or email so you don’t miss out on this highly informative and useful week.

Giveaway rules.