American Sign Language In Children

Being a parent is hard enough; until a child is old enough to understand English, there is no way to communicate with it. Most parents do not realize, there is. American Sign Language is a language developed by Deaf people, for Deaf people and is used primarily in the United State and parts of Canada. Although ASL was developed by Deaf people for their own use, sign language can be utilized by so many others; including infants under two years of age and those with special needs that effect their speaking abilities. Studies have shown that teaching infants ASL before they are able to speak can help those infants speak and read at faster rates and can increase their comprehension of the English language. Teaching sign language to children with …show more content…
For a majority of people, a portion of their personal self-esteem stems from their ability to take care of themselves, which requires being able to express one’s needs. This is not just the case for adults, “Baby signing experts believe that frustration and tantrums can be avoided by closing the gap between desire to communicate and the ability to do so,” (Collingwood, Paragraph 1.) Experts say that if toddlers were able to more effectively communicate their needs they would be less likely to have out bursts and be generally more content. This is where baby sign language can be crucial. Baby sign language is slightly different from American Sign Language, mostly it is not actually a complete language. Baby sign language is simply a compilation of signs most pertinent to the life of children under two years. For example; hungry, thirsty, milk, more, mother, father, tired, yes and no (Collingwood, Paragraph 2.) Although a child this young may not have the dexterity to perfectly execute each sign, they are simple enough to recognize in poor form. An additional benefit is that with practice, the dexterity of the child will increase …show more content…
Studies have shown that infants that were taught a gestural language before, or accompanied by, their spoken language they developed larger vocabularies and had more developed brains. Babies are born with nearly double the amount of brain synapses (the highways in our brain for information to travel) that they will have when they are adults, and most of these will be gone by the time the child is three. These synapses either get used and exercised or the die from lack of necessity. When we stimulate these at an early age, we can save thousands, or millions, and allow even more learning to occur. Introducing a second language that is not also spoken allows for more of the brain to be used and developed. “The sign language young students learn is presumable stored in a different memory store than English, giving them two independent language sources for search and recall,” (Daniels, 296.) This possibility would be a great asset for children. As those who are bilingual in two or more verbal languages, expressing ideas and needs is much easier when you have more than one language to pull from. When needs can be expressed and tended to quickly, negative feelings manifest for less time and both parents and toddlers are much