Teaching sign language

Teaching signs to small non verbal children has recently become quite popular. Teaching signs is beneficial in many ways. First and foremost it aids your small child in communicating with you. When your child is too young to speak, signs can greatly help because once your child knows a few they CAN communicate. This decreases frustration (on both sides) and problem behaviors. Not only that but recent studies have shown that signs actually promote language once children can verbalize by acting as a physical prompt. So that means if you teach your child "ball" and one day ask them "what do you want?" they may sign "ball" and then say the word, the signing helped them remember the actual word ball.

I once taught a two year boy who had no language but over 200 signs from watching "Signing Time" on PBS. He signed randomly, first I taught him to use meaningful signs (instead of signing "brushing teeth" while swimming he was taught to sign things like "milk" when he wanted a drink). Next we paired the signs with word sounds and required him to sound out while signing, like saying the c sound while signing "cookie." We then shaped the c sound to become more and more like the actual word "cookie." Soon he dropped the signs on his own and just said "cookie." Of course this child had a speech delay, but the same idea applies to typical children.