New parents know it’s not always easy knowing what your little one needs or wants, until they can speak fluently. Now multiple that times two or three and parents’ frustration can double or triple along with the babies’ frustration! For all the reasons why signing is beneficial with one hearing baby, parents of multiples have even more incentive to make life calmer for everyone in the family.

Years ago, parents with a set of twins came to my class and said, “We really want to take this class because we’re afraid of the ‘secret twin language’. If there’s going to be another language used in our home, we want to be hip to it, so those two don’t start conspiring against us!” It was good to see that those doubly sleep-deprived parents had a sense of humor. What those parents may or may not have known is that “twin talk”, known as idioglossia or cryptophasia, may not actually be a secret language that only their tots can understand.

Some scientists believe that what the multiples are speaking is not an entirely new or separate language. Rather, they believe it may be delayed or diminished speech development in either one or all of the little ones who came into this world together. Even if only one of the multiples is experiencing linguistic or speech delays, the other/s may mimic these speech patterns and eventually understanding of this modified attempt at typical spoken language develops between these partners in crime, and everyone else is accidentally left out of the conversation.

In the first three years of life, one of the major functions of a little one’s brain is to learn language. Sometimes, multiples have more one-on-one communication time with each other than with anyone else in the family, including their parents who are being pulled in several different directions. Multiples may continue to communicate in this modified manner and eventually start to understand each other. It may sound like gibberish or a mutually-created language to the rest of us when, in fact, it wasn’t initially meant to be a secret code that parents wouldn’t be able to crack.

The March of Dimes has documented that in the U.S. in 2021, 8.8% of singleton births were preterm, and 63% of multiple births were preterm. The organization defines a preterm birth as any baby born alive before 37 weeks of pregnancy are completed. Speech and language delays, which are common in any preterm birth, could result in what appears to be a secret code between those mysterious and fascinating little creatures who came to the planet as a set.

It’s reasonable that multiples would continue to foster close communication with each other, even if it includes using what seems to be modifications of typical speech. There’s also a theory that suggests that multiples tend to talk faster and may abbreviate their words or leave out consonants as they’re learning to talk, perhaps in a competitive attempt to talk over their sibling/s and grab their parents’ attention first. These little ones may have gone from fighting for elbow room in utero to fighting to be heard from their highchairs or car seats.

In most cases, multiples will catch up to their singleton peers by the time they head off to school. But why wait that long? As the research on signing babies has shown time and time again, babies who sign have a linguistic edge and often speak sooner. So, whether your multiple bundles of joy have a linguistic delay or not, which isn’t always evident early on anyway, why not give them an edge or simply the chance to level the communication playing field by using relevant American Sign Language vocabulary to ease everyone’s frustration and keep everyone’s language in sync? Remember, signing with all hearing babies not only gives them a jump start on language and reduces everyone’s frustration long before speech is possible, but signing also increases their overall understanding and use of language with benefits that are evident well into childhood! Check out some of the studies supporting the short-term and long-term linguistic benefits of signing with hearing babies and toddlers.

I “humbly” stand by my claim that Hop to Signaroo ® offers the finest sign language classes for hearing parents and babies for many reasons, and one of those reasons is the fact that I don’t charge extra for families of multiples. From what I’ve learned, many baby-oriented services charge families of multiples extra. That’s just wrong, in my opinion. Check out Hop to Signaroo’s ® various in-person and virtual class options and learn a skill that has been proven to make life easier for new parents and babies!

The post Don’t Multiply Your Frustration! appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

When she started using sign language with her eight-month old baby, Janet Choi was a little skeptical. For four months, she signed “more” to her son Soren, who didn’t seem interested. But during his first birthday party, his two hands came together asking for “more”. “I was shocked because I had given up,” says Choi, a Rainier Beach mom. “But at some point, it had taken hold – he had internalized it.” At 14 months, with help from a training video by Joseph Garcia, Sign With Your Baby, and a sign language website, Soren started learning additional signs and Choi’s skepticism gave way to pleasant surprise. Now at this point (16 months), I can teach him a sign during the day and he will know it by the time he’s going to bed.

For many Seattle area parents, signing has become part of their parenting toolbox, a way to encourage their child to communicate before he or she can speak. “Babies have language skills much sooner than they have speech skills”, says Nancy Hanauer, who teaches Signing With Your Baby classes throughout the Seattle area. Language development begins by five months, she says, but speech doesn’t emerge until closer to a year.

The optimal time to start signing, she says, is at about seven or eight months, when memory, manual dexterity and cognitive abilities enable little ones to put it all together. “Babies can express their first sign at six, seven, eight months of age and express their needs and wants and lower their frustrations.”

In her classes, which use Garcia’s book as a primer, Hanauer teaches signs that are used during the natural course of the day. “More”, “milk”, and “eat” are common starters. Eye contact is important, she says, as is consistency. To help parents decide what signs to introduce, Hanauer relies on the acronym KISS – Keep It Simple and Significant. “What do you want the baby to tell you that you are not able to identify from their crying, or their whining, or their babbling?”

For Jennifer Reibman of Bellevue, signing allowed her to communicate with her pre-verbal daughter Moriah, who is now 2 . “It was nice that if she was in pain, she could do the ‘pain’ sign near the body part that hurt.” Reibman had read that signing promoted language development and, together with her moms group, started signing after attending a lecture by Garcia. She also was attracted to Garcia’s method, which is based on American Sign Language, because she viewed signing as a transferable skill her daughter could develop.

“We didn’t try to build this enormous vocabulary and I limited it to things we were doing and saying every day,” Reibman says. “And once she was talking, I didn’t keep up with it so much.” Now a mother of two (son Barak was born in May), Reibman does plan to sign with her son, but admits that it may be hard to be as dedicated with her second child.

Hanauer says that when it comes to signing, there’s a broad range of success. Many families stick with 10 to 12 signs – simple safety, comfort, and food signs. Others are using up to 20 signs by age 1 and up to 80 signs by age 2. What’s most important, she says, is tailoring the communication to the family’s needs.

For Choi, maintaining and building her son’s signing vocabulary from “apple” to the more abstract concept “please” has been easier than she thought. “I thought it would be a big task, but the pace is slow enough that I don’t feel it’s been that much work for me. I definitely feel the payoff is worth the effort I put into it.”

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At 8 months old, Marcus Mussivand has expressive brown eyes that tell his mother, Camano Island resident Debbie Mussivand, exactly what he’s thinking when she puts him in his crib before he’s ready.

After spending Saturday at a baby sign language class, Marcus also may be able to use gestures to tell his mother a lot of other things as well. Using American Sign Language before he’s able to talk means Marcus could learn to ask for food or milk before he’s even a year old. He could politely suggest that his parents change his diaper. He could even tell them when he’s not feeling so hot.

As teacher Nancy Hanauer said during a “Signing With Your Baby” workshop at Stanwood Public Library on Saturday afternoon, most hearing children don’t start stringing coherent sentences together until they are about 2 years old. “But you don’t have to wait that long,” Hanauer said. “Little ones really do have more going on than we give them credit for.” The Seattle-based former special education teacher tells parents that by teaching babies sign language, the babies will be able to clearly communicate their needs. Hanauer, who now makes her living teaching baby sign language, gives workshops around the area and in people’s homes.

She bases a lot of her teachings on the book “Sign With Your Baby” by Bellingham teacher and sign language interpreter Joseph Garcia, and she herself has more than 15 years of American Sign Language experience. She urges parents to start off with three to five basic signs — gestures for words such as hungry, food, milk, hurt and diaper change. Parents can begin teaching babies the signs at mealtimes, and can also use playtime and songs to reinforce the signs. On average, a little over a month after parents begin signing with babies, the babies begin signing back.

“It’s very Pavlovian,” Hanauer said. “I hate to reduce it to this, but it’s cause and effect.” Babies aren’t able to form words until they are about a year old, but they can communicate and understand language much sooner than that, she said.

At 7 to 8 months old, babies have the memory, the hand coordination and the smarts to communicate through sign language months before they can speak. The way Hanauer sees it, there are legions of frustrated babies and young children out there. It’s adults that need to catch up by giving babies a jump-start on language.

Traditionally, parents think they have to wait until a baby joins the adult verbal world to start getting to know their child. “Now you can start to get to know your child at 7 or 8 months of age,” she said. Teaching children basic sign language and adding new signs as they get older is a way of decoding what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s also a way of bonding, and a way of reducing aggravation. The “terrible twos,” she said, are a perfect example of this. “It’s two years of built-up frustration of no one understanding you,” she said. “For children who can communicate using sign language, it’s not so terrible. They can express themselves without whining, kicking, screaming and throwing a temper tantrum.”

Some parents worry that teaching a child sign language means the child will choose signing over speaking. That isn’t true, Hanauer said. Instead, when children are ready, they replace the signs with words — and often a lot of them. Baby sign language hones a child’s communication skills so much that when they do begin to speak, they often are highly articulate. She said studies show that children who signed as babies on the whole are more confident and have higher IQs.

Baby sign language also teaches kids the beginnings of a legitimate second language at a very young age — a language they may choose to continue to pursue into adulthood. Along with raising awareness and interest in American Sign Language, it makes more people sensitive to the deaf community, she said.

While some believe that teaching babies sign language is an abstract concept, “everything is an abstract concept for your baby until you make the connection for them,” Hanauer said.

Marcus’ mother said she brought him so she could learn to make that connection with him. “Anything that can be added to his developing skills is important,” she said. “”I’m interested for myself to learn more sign language, too. “Marcus’ grandmother, Sherry Erickson, also of Camano Island, accompanied her daughter and grandson to the baby sign language class. “It would be so amazing if the baby could actually respond to you like that,” Erickson said. “I know there’s something in there he wants to tell us.”

The post Tots Can Say A Lot Workshop Helps Parents Translate appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

Once Dr. Spock had all the answers a parent could want, and indeed his 1946 classic Baby and Child Care is still a perennial seller. But we’ve progressed a good deal since 1946, and today a budding generation of hyper-attentive young parents is clamoring for tools to help them raise their young.

Seattle-based infant sign language and communication expert Nancy Hanauer has unwittingly benefited from this trend-and the recent baby boom-with her program Signing With Your Baby. Hanauer was inspired by the work of Bellingham author and child development expert Joseph Garcia, who launched a regimen of sign language for babies with normal hearing to help them communicate with their parents before speaking age. Hanauer uses her experience from working with deaf and special-education children, as well as a mix of Garcia’s teachings, to instruct parents on how to communicate through simple signs.

Three days after advertising her first class in September, 2000, it was full, and Hanauer realized she had a winner. “In other parts of the country, signing with your baby is not nearly as popular as it is in Seattle,” she says. “Parents are far more progressive out here, much better read. There’s a different idea about kids and families.” Enthusiasm is growing. Her first two years, Hanauer taught 200 families; in the past two months, she’s taught 100.

Classes are one hour a week for four weeks. Signs such as “milk,” “more” and “bed” are taught, and babies typically start signing back after four to eight weeks of practice (Hanauer recommends the class for infants at least 5 months old). There are certainly naysayers who think parents are trying to push their babies too fast, Hanauer admits. But the proof is in the results, she adds. “People are saying, this is going to help my child’s development, but they are also realizing it’s cutting down on their baby’s frustration.” Instead of throwing a temper tantrum, when a baby wants to go to bed, he can calmly make the sign to express his need. Dr. Spock never taught that!

The post Signs of Intelligence appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

There is a particular span of time which is frustrating for both parent and child, maybe even more so for the child. It is the time between when children begin communicating non-verbally and when they speak in words. The child screams, cries, has a tantrum, just to try to communicate to the parent or caregiver. After the uproar and confusion of what could be bothering her, you realize she just needed a drink of milk or maybe that her gums hurt from teething. There is an alternative: baby sign language.

“Signing with hearing babies allows them to express emotions, feelings, needs and to increase engagement by lowering the stress in family,” said Edmonds resident Nancy Hanauer, who teaches sign language to hearing families with hearing babies throughout King and Snohomish Counties. She runs a class at the Frances Anderson Center in Edmonds and also teaches the same course in local homes, childcare centers and schools.

Hanauer, a state certified teacher, has spent much of her professional life instructing Deaf and hard of hearing children and hearing children who struggle with reading. She started teaching her “Signing With Your Baby” course about two years ago. The American Sign Language course she teaches is based on the book Sign With Your Baby written by Bellingham resident Joseph Garcia.

Garcia said the point of teaching hearing parents and babies sign language is simply to try to make parents better parents. “Signing is a gift from the Deaf to the hearing,” Garcia said. “I believe (being Deaf) is not a symbol of a disability but one of ability.”

There are other forms of baby sign language and books that teach it, Hanauer said, “but if it’s not American Sign Language (ASL), it’s fake and is teaching the child a secret language,” she said. American Sign Language can be translated in an emergency situation by anyone who knows how to sign, Hanauer said. Using ASL “teaches them a sensitivity at a young age to people who use another language to communicate,” Hanauer said.

Garcia, who has been featured on the television news program 20/20, said he started the program after years of experience interpreting for the Deaf and teaching sign language. As he taught special education, early childhood development and adult education, he realized teaching hearing adults to sign to hearing babies would help resolve some of their daily stress. Garcia knows the ups and downs of parenting. He and his wife have two teenage children and an adopted 10-month-old.

Garcia said he started early in teaching his new baby signs. “Don’t wait until they are expressing signs to start teaching,” Garcia said. “Just because your baby isn’t signing back doesn’t mean they don’t understand far more than they indicate,” he said. “They have gone through this incredible mental process before that, associating the infrastructure for later spoken language.”

Skeptics have said if children are signing, it will delay them from actually talking. But Hanauer said, in her experience, children speak sooner because she teaches signing and speaking simultaneously. “There’s more left and right brain activity with signing. They have to process it, say the word, and sign it,” she said.

A challenge of signing is that it won’t work when the baby isn’t looking. Or, since the parent can speak and hear, it is hard to remember to practice the signing with the baby throughout the day, said some parents in the class in Edmonds given by Hanauer. The class is filled with parents and babies from five months to the oldest, Lynnwood resident Addison Turner, 13 months. Addison’s grandparents, Dee and Fred Busch of Everett, care for Addison about three days a week and have been signing to him for months. “He understands all of the signs we use with him and he uses a few himself and has made up his own signs,” she said. “He just signed his first sentence the other day.” He was walking on a bridge over a creek and while he usually would stick his hand in the water, he stopped and signed “Water, no, cold,” she said.

In the class, some parents and caregivers choose to include their child in the class while others choose to learn on their own and then teach the child at home. Either way is fine, Hanauer said. Hanauer encourages her students to stick with the basics when signing with babies. “You need to have the basics to get through the rough times,” she said.

Her classes consist of babies from five months to about two years old. But due to popular demand, she is planning on offering a follow up, refresher workshop for past students. While you can start signing with your baby at five months or earlier, babies won’t typically start to sign back until they are about eight months to 1- year-old, she said. “About the time they are waving “hi” and “bye” on their own,” Hanauer said, it is something parents/caregivers need to stick to, because the child will eventually start signing.

Mill Creek residents Joe and Lisa Boscacci, parents of fraternal twins Gianna and Jared, learned the basics of baby signing from Garcia’s book, when the twins were about eight months old. Lisa Boscacci said. “It was hard to stick with it, because you don’t see results right away,” she admits. “Then, literally, all of a sudden about when they turned a year old they started signing back. “I just picked five or six signs to get us through the rough times – ones to help communicate with us before they could talk,” Boscacci said. The signs the Boscacci’s picked were “eat”, “more”, “all done”, “down”, “ouch”, “please” and “thank you”. “And they have made up signs of their own, and then the twins copied each other to use the signs” she said, which the experts say is very common. Now the twins are 22 months, and their words have for the most part taken over, Boscacci said. But every once in awhile Gianna will sign what she wants after her words aren’t answered right away or if she doesn’t get the answer she wants, her Mom said.

Tips from Joseph Garcia, author of Sign With Your Baby:

• Don’t push signs on your baby but instead augment your normal communication activities with signs.
• Don’t go out and buy all the books about baby sign language and “force feed signs on your child” – don’t have too high expectations. It’s the delivery process – not only cerebral but physical too.
• Don’t show off your child or have them sign out of context.
• Don’t hold back care giving if they stop or don’t sign.
• Don’t show disappointment when they don’t sign back or they sign wrong.
• Do keep giving them more signs. They want more signs, just like they want more words. Then allow the child to discover the signs through their observations. It’s that discovery process that empowers your child and gives them their first steps in their journey to self esteem.

The post Signing Jump Starts Babies’ Early Communication appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

Babies cry and babble, point and make various gestures to communicate their needs and wants long before they’re capable of speech. Often, however, they can become frustrated in their attempts to make their desires known to parents and caregivers, who in turn experience their own frustrations when trying to interpret these noises and non-verbal actions. To help deal with this problem, early childhood development researcher Joseph Garcia (based in Bellingham) began using American Sign Language (ASL) with pre-verbal hearing babies and their parents and discovered that it was an effective, empowering tool to aid early communication. Garcia went on to write a book on his discoveries entitled Sign With Your Baby and since then his methods have gained in popularity, making them one of the newest trends in parenting.

Edmonds resident Nancy Hanauer, a Washington State Certified Teacher with over eleven years of teaching experience, is putting Garcia’s work into practice through her series of Signing With Your Baby classes, held locally and in the greater Seattle area. In 1991, Hanauer first began teaching Deaf and hard of hearing students and acquired her fluency in ASL. She eventually moved onto working with hearing students who were struggling in reading and learned much about language acquisition in this setting. Over the years, she became aware of research about the use of ASL as a means to communicate with pre-verbal hearing babies.

“I read about studies that showed that babies were able to communicate via sign language at about seven or eight months of age – months before they were able to speak,” explains Hanauer. “They are not able to say what they want, but they are already fluent at gesturing and they can show what they want. I had a colleague who had taught her hearing baby ASL and found the same result. The notion really intrigued me.”

About 18 months ago, Hanauer took a leave of absence from her special education teaching position to pursue teaching children’s art classes on a full-time basis. She had been doing some of this on the side and wanted to give it a go full-time. On a whim, she threw a Signing With Your Baby class into the mix and within three days her first class was filled up to capacity.

That was 18 months and almost 200 families ago. Since then, she has scaled back on her art classes, turned in her letter of resignation to the school district she was working for, received additional training from Joseph Garcia’s staff on methodology and practice and is now pursuing teaching her Signing With Your Baby classes on a full-time basis. “I absolutely love teaching my classes!” says Hanauer. “The families I work with have been wonderful and I’ve been thrilled with the response I received from my classes and workshops. It’s been so gratifying to work with parents and babies and empower them with a skill that will strengthen their bond, initiate earlier communication and reduce frustration.”

Hanauer’s classes meet once a week for an hour, over a four week session. She uses Garcia’s book as the basis of her curriculum, but also includes a variety of additional signs which are baby-oriented and not covered in as much detail in Garcia’s book – including foods, animals, colors, numbers and letters. In the classes, babies and their parents learn about 80 ASL signs that are most relevant to a baby’s needs, such as signs for “more”, “diaper change”, “sleep”, “milk”, “ear hurt” and “hug”.

According to Hanauer, learning just a few signs can be helpful in enabling the baby to communicate what he or she wants. She says, “It’s an effective, temporary method of expression.” She incorporates songs, stories, and other hands-on activities in her curriculum and uses a light-hearted approach to make learning fun parents and their babies.

Hanauer’s classes are designed for parents with babies as young as five months to parents with toddlers up to approximately 24 months old. She believes that it’s never too early to start signing with babies and the introduction of sign language at a very early age definitely won’t harm them. However, she says, “Sign language will begin to have more relevancy to your little one at about seven or eight months. Most research has shown that at approximately this age babies have the motor skills to produce the signs and the cognitive ability to understand the signs. Hanauer emphasizes that it is the consistency of the use of the signs on a daily basis that is the key to success of signing babies. As with all other skills, babies develop at their own pace and some will begin signing soon after being introduced to a sign.

Others will recognize and respond to signs but won’t produce their first sign until a month or occasionally longer after being introduced to the sign. According to Hanauer, families she has taught reported that their baby’s sign vocabulary increased as the baby grew, and that by the time they turned one they knew and used as many as twenty signs and as many as seventy signs by the time they were two years old.

She says, “At this stage of development, the average baby certainly can’t vocalize that many words, so imagine how empowering this would be for your baby!” Hanauer cites the many benefits that can come from signing with babies. In addition to relieving frustration and developing stronger parent-child bonds, signing babies often develop a better understanding of language and increase their language competency, experience higher levels of self esteem due to feeling empowered with an effective way to express themselves, and have fewer tantrums because their needs and wants are more clearly communicated. “Sign language allows you to peek inside your baby’s mind to see what he or she is thinking, feeling and observing,” says Hanauer. “The benefits are numerous when you teach your baby to sign, not whine!”

Parents who have taken Hanauer’s classes wholeheartedly agree. “My baby and I really enjoyed the class,” writes parent Cindy Erickson of Everett. I continue to use sign language with my baby daily and believe teaching her early (at seven months) has really helped. I can clearly understand what she wants and if I sign something to her, she knows exactly what I am asking or telling her. It is so much fun to know that she understands and can respond.” Ony Huffman of Edmonds reports, “It is so amazing to me at how natural it was to use my hands to sign and communicate with my son. It’s exciting for us to see our son use signs. It is also neat to see him sign with his older brother who already knew some sign language.”

The post “Sign, Don’t Whine” is the Focus of Parent-Baby Classes appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

The problem: The baby is crying, wailing and whining, won’t sleep, won’t stop. Her weary parents are wondering, “What? Is she teething? Tired? Hungry? Wet? What does she WANT?”

The solution: “Teach your baby to sign-not whine! That says it all,” says Nancy Hanauer, whose popular “Signing With Your Baby” classes teach American Sign Language (ASL) to babies and their bewildered parents. “The goal is to reduce the stress for the whole family, because they can learn to communicate their needs by signing.

“Your baby wants to tell you something when he’s crying and babbling, pointing and gesturing, and he expects you to understand him,” Nancy continues. “Crying, whining, and fussing are the only means of communication they have. Babies don’t have the fine motor skills to SAY what they want. But as early as seven months old, they are already fluent at gesturing, and they can SHOW what they want. Because sign language is visual and gestural, “Babies are attuned to it and it’s very natural for them,” she says. Learning just a few ASL signs, such as “more,” “ear-hurt,” “change,” “sleep,” “milk”, or “hug” enables the baby to communicate what she wants. According to Nancy, “It’s an effective temporary method of expressing herself before she is able to speak.”

Although ASL has long been used by the Deaf, the idea of hearing babies and parents signing to communicate with each other is a new trend in parenting. While it is expanding rapidly in the U.S. and overseas, it is especially popular in the Northwest since its founder, early childhood development researcher Joseph Garcia, is based in Bellingham. Hanauer uses Garcia’s methods and materials in her classes.

In her classes, babies and their parents learn about 80 ASL signs, those most relevant to a baby’s needs. Classes meet for an hour each week for four consecutive weeks. Using songs, stories and other activities, Nancy teaches with a “light-hearted, hands-on approach that’s fun for parents and babies”. Parents, parents-to-be, grandparents, and other caregivers such as day-care providers, learn how to sign with the baby. The babies, usually between 6 and 18 months old, often accompany them to class.

“Nancy was very prepared, enthusiastic, and so knowledgeable and experienced,” says Gabrielle Fox-Catton of Edmonds, who recently attended Signing With Your Baby classes at the Frances Anderson Center in Edmonds with her baby, Lexie.

Hanauer began teaching Signing With Your Baby classes after ten years experience as a certified and credentialed teacher of Deaf and Special Education students. With her interest and training in ASL and education, she wanted to learn more about Signing With Your Baby. When she was ready to offer her own classes, she quit her day job, followed her bliss, and found her niche. “It was a huge leap of faith,” she admits, “but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done! It’s changed my life. I work for myself, and it’s opened up so many avenues. It’s exciting for me to be able to take my knowledge of Deaf culture and ASL and language development into a completely different realm than I ever considered! It’s been so gratifying-an absolute joy– to work with parents and babies and empower them with a skill that will aid communication, reduce frustration, and strengthen their bond.”

Another plus about this job for the vivacious teacher is “Definitely, the babies! Babies just tickle me. I get to play with the babies and they’re so sweet-I love it! And the parents are so enthusiastic-they want the best for their children.” One enthusiastic parent is Sandi Young, mother of signing baby Noelle. “Using sign language has been a great experience for us-we’re so impressed with the results. Our baby started signing at a year old, and it’s just the best when babies can tell you they’d like a drink or more to eat.” The Youngs are just one of over 100 families that Nancy has worked with over the past year and a half. Nancy is delighted with the success of her classes and enthusiastic about the results. Families of signing babies report that they experience less frustration, a stronger parent-child bond, higher levels of self-esteem, fewer tantrums, easier toilet-training, and here’s the clincher: the “terrible twos” turn out to be almost tame.

Signing babies are successful in communicating their immediate needs. They also seem to be laying the groundwork for better language skills in the future. Nancy explains, “When you sign, you’re using both sides of the brain, so these babies are stimulating their brain in a unique manner that their non-signing babies aren’t.” What’s more, babies who sign start talking sooner than their hearing peers and in a more sophisticated manner. Their parents report, “When they start talking, we can’t get them to stop!” Nancy’s experience supports recent research that indicates that as signing babies get older, they often show larger vocabularies than their peers, as well as more interest in books, stronger reading and communication skills, and higher IQ scores.

However, the goal of signing babies is not a higher IQ. Nancy clarifies that signing babies are not being pushed by anxious or ambitious parents to perform beyond their level of maturity. She says that instead, the goal is simple: “To empower your little one and give him the ability to communicate his needs and wants to you in order to reduce his frustration and yours.” The result: no more fussy babies, no more frustrated parents. Babies who sign don’t whine! No wonder Signing With Your Baby classes are so much in demand.

Nancy has scheduled upcoming classes at several sites, including North Seattle Community College, Bellevue Community College, the Phinney Neighborhood Center, and the North Kirkland Community Center. For those who can’t attend the scheduled classes, Nancy also offers Signing With Your Baby classes in students’ homes to groups of four or more families.

Nancy Hanauer moved to Edmonds seven years ago and loves living and working here. “I came to this area and just drove around and then I found downtown Edmonds and said, “This is it! This is where I need to live! It’s so charming, it’s so beautiful, it’s so peaceful.” The petite, green-eyed Nancy also teaches art classes in Edmonds and sells some of her own work -“everything from garden art to soaps and bath salts”-at the Edmonds Summer Market on Saturdays. There, she says, “I run into so many families from my art classes and Signing With Your Baby classes. I love Edmonds for that sense of community!”

The post Your Baby is Trying to Tell You Something appeared first on Hop to Signaroo.

Published in the July 2nd, 2002 edition of the Edmonds Journal, Lynnwood Journal, Northgate Journal, North Seattle Journal, Shoreline Journal, South Everett Journal, and University Journal

How many times have you looked into the dreamy depths of a baby’s eyes and wondered, “What is he thinking?” Add tears and tantrums to the scenario, and most people would give anything for an answer. Is his diaper wet? Could he be hungry? Thirsty? Tired? Sick?

There’s nothing more frustrating for a parent than playing this guessing game, and now some educators are saying it doesn’t have to work this way. “We tell parents to teach their baby to sign, not whine’,” says Nancy Hanauer, a state certified teacher who shows parents how to communicate with their preverbal children through American Sign Language. “Babies are so much more aware of what’s going on in their world than we realize. They want to comment and express their needs, they just don’t have the verbal ability to do that.”

But preverbal babies do have the manual dexterity, mental and visual ability to sign their needs, says Hanauer, and that’s why sign language is such an effective means of communication in infants, starting at about seven or eight months of age. “The whole idea is to reduce the stress, crying and guess work parents go through to figure out what their baby is trying to tell them,” she says. To begin, parents and their babies learn just a few simple signs like “more,” “change,” “sleep” and “milk,” and they adapt the practice to fit the individual needs of their family.

Some tots just learn a few basic signs to get them through the rough spots, while others really immerse themselves in the language and carry it on for years. “As with crawling, speaking, walking and all other skills, babies develop at their own pace,” says Hanauer. Bright, observant children often pick up signs within a few weeks of introduction and most learn to link words together. For example, babies might sign “Eat more please” when they’re still hungry.

Although sign language is an age-old method of communication, using signs with hearing babies is a new trend in parenting – and it’s catching on like wildfire. Local families have access to several baby-signing classes, as well as a variety of children’s sign-language videos and texts. Bellingham educator Joseph Garcia helped start the movement in 1994 with his book, Toddler Talk, and later Sign With Your Baby, which is also used as the basis for Hanauer’s curriculum. In addition, Hanauer introduces parents to a wide variety of baby-oriented signs not included in the textbook, such as relevant foods, numbers, colors and animals. “It’s very easy to slide signs into a daily routine, and once babies pick it up they’re like little sponges,” says Hanauer. “The beauty of the language is an ongoing source of inspiration for me.”

Hanauer has been fluent in sign language for more than 15 years and has over 10 years experience instructing adults, regular education students and special education students. She began teaching “Signing With Your Baby” classes in 2000, and says the results of over 200 local families have been phenomenal.

“No one can believe at just a little over age two how much Noelle talks,” says Sandi Young, a Mukilteo parent who attends Hanauer’s “Signing With Your Baby” classes. “Noelle tells stories, nursery rhymes and can repeat words correctly the first time she tries. I’ve noticed she watches us intently when we’re talking or reading which I think came from watching us sign to her. She picks things up so quickly.” JoDee Zappone of Lynnwood says Hanauer’s classes helped improve communication and cut down on tantrums.

“Parents tell me that when they use signing, the terrible twos are not so terrible,” says Hanauer. “Think about it: The terrible twos are two years of pent-up frustration over a child not being able to express what he or she wants. By relieving that frustration, the child learns to communicate more effectively.”

When they are old enough to speak, Hanauer says babies will naturally phase out the use of sign language or use signs in addition to talking. Current research suggests that sign language actually makes it easier for babies to learn how to talk. Studies conducted by two California professors found babies who sign tend to speak sooner than their peers, and by age 2 have an average of 50 words more in their vocabulary. Hanauer says she’s seen evidence of these results herself.

“Babies who sign start talking sooner than their hearing peers and they also speak in a more sophisticated manner,” she reports. “When you sign, you’re using both sides of the brain, so these babies are stimulating their brains in ways that non-signing babies aren’t. When these kids start talking, we can’t get them to stop.”

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Sound familiar? Perhaps it’s time to join the legion of relieved, Hop to Signaroo ® parents who feel as if they’ve cracked the code of Parenting 101 by signing with their babies to greatly reduce frustration many months before speech is possible. What may seem like a recent trend has actually been a tool parents have been using for several decades, since the first books about baby sign language were written in the 1980’s. Judging by the families embracing the movement with each new addition to the family, signing for hearing parents and babies is here to stay!

Hearing families are enthusiastically and successfully using American Sign Language (ASL) vocabulary with their hearing babies as a temporary bridge to communication, many months before their babies are able to speak. First spoken words generally come at about 12 to 14 months of age. Based on vocal cord development and how happy the sounds of “Momma” and Dadda” make the big people, babies routinely repeat these first words and just a few others for several months before they can truly express their needs and wants with spoken language. Vocal cords aren’t fully engaged until at least 16 months of age, and babies aren’t typically expressing very specific needs until closer to two years of age. However, babies do have the manual dexterity, memory, cognitive ability and linguistic understanding to express their needs and wants through sign language as early as five months of age! Little ones understand and want to express much more than they’re able to verbalize at an early age.

Wondering how to start? Start with your baby’s basic necessities such as “milk”, “eat”, “more”, “diaper change” and move on from there, adding favorites such as “music”, “pacifier” or “teddy bear”. Model signs throughout the course of your normal routine as you feed your little one, change a diaper or go for a walk. Be sure to speak as you normally would, in complete sentences, and sign just the key words you want the baby to ultimately sign back to you, such as “milk”, “change”, “eat”, etc.

Consistency is key. In the first month, model at least a dozen signs regularly so your little one won’t simply use one sign for everything, which is typically what happens when only three or four signs are introduced at the start. The more signs you use consistently, the quicker your little genius will recognize the signs and then sign back, appropriately using the signs to tell you what they want! With regular use of at least a dozen signs, most babies recognize the signs within the first few weeks and sign back within a few months, if the babies are at least five months of age when their parents begin signing with them.

Families who enthusiastically embrace signing and take a baby sign language class, like Hop to Signaroo ®, often see results even faster. On average, most Hop to Signaroo ® babies are recognizing signs within the first two to three weeks and signing back within two to three months. However, hundreds of families in my classes have reported their babies have signed their first sign within the first month of signing. Some have even signed for the first time in class! Those are babies after my own hear – some of us just love to have an audience!

Make signing fun! Add the signs to your daily routine but also sign when you read or sing to your baby and get all family members involved, so your little one is able to communicate with all primary caregivers and sees the signs modeled by everyone on a regular basis.

Will signing slow down my baby’s speech? This is the most common concern and the answer is a resounding “No”. When you sign with your hearing baby, you’re addressing language before speech is possible. Speech is a natural reflex and all babies are born with the ability and desire to speak, barring any physiological challenges that would impede speech. Babies hear an average of 4,500 words throughout the course of a day, so a normally developing hearing baby will never choose sign language over their natural inclination to speak. This would be like saying, “I won’t let my baby crawl because they’ll become too dependent on crawling and will never walk”. Babies move through developmental stages using the skills they have at the time until they’re developmentally able to move on, and sign language is just another one of those stepping stones – a highly effective stepping stone that helps take the guesswork out of parenting!

Choosing a program with American Sign Language vocabulary will ensure that the practice does not interfere with speech, as a few baby signing programs use created gestures, not true ASL signs. Some of these created gestures involve sniffing, panting and blowing and, yes, that will slow down speech. However, when you use ASL signs and model speech as you normally would, your little genius will sign, then sign and speak, and once they realize their speech is completely intelligible, the signs will fall by the wayside. Remember, speech is a natural reflex in all babies and your baby’s speech will likely benefit from the use of sign language. Many families report that their little ones were stringing two to three signs together by the time they were a year old and then began speaking in two to three word sentences much earlier than their non-signing peers. As an added bonus, many parents say the “Terrible Twos” weren’t so terrible, because their little one didn’t have two years of built up frustration from not being understood!

Wouldn’t you like a household that’s calmer for you and your baby? Don’t you want to bond with your baby in a unique way that lays the foundation for positive communication that will last well beyond the toddler years? Then signing may be the answer, as early communication and reduced frustration are literally at your fingertips!

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Any parent will tell you that one of the most frustrating aspects of raising children is when you can’t understand what your child wants. Infants and toddlers can throw epic tantrums when they are misunderstood. Luckily, there’s a simple and fun solution to helping young children communicate: sign language! Teaching hearing infants and toddlers American Sign Language to enhance language and communication is not a new trend, and there’s a teacher on the Eastside who can help teach you and your child to sign.

Nancy Hanauer, founder of Hop to Signaroo, has more than 20 years of teaching experience, including teaching American Sign Language to hearing families. Her original methods and curriculum have helped more than 2,000 babies learn to sign in the past 13 years of her Hop to Signaroo classes, and she’s an award-winning baby sign language teacher. As you may imagine, this make Hanauer one busy lady; yet she still manages to teach each Hop to Signaroo class herself.

Babies know what they want well before they are capable of vocalizing their desires. This can lead to intense frustration for babies, toddlers and caregivers. Amazingly, babies have the cognitive ability, memory, manual dexterity and enough understanding of language to make signing possible at as young as five months of age, according to Hanauer. She adds, “Signing with hearing babies also enhances brain and language development, motor skills, and it strengthens the parent-baby bond with early, positive communication.” In fact, in many classes, babies begin to recognize signs within two to three weeks and sign back within two to three months. One of Hanauer’s tips to parents is to use at least 12 signs as opposed to the typically recommended three signs, so parents are less likely to become bored and stop using signs and babies realize that signs are a form of communication and can be used for many things.

Four-week classes are held at Swedish Medical Centers in Redmond and Issaquah, and Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland. Four-week classes and workshops for groups are also available in your home.

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