Babies can communicate long before they can talk. We know this is true of the nonverbal communication that helps tie child and parents to each other from day 1. But what about communication by language, the quintessential human ability? Infants can use their hands with greater precision than their mouths. What happens, then, if we teach infants some of the common signs of American Sign Language? If they can communicate more effectively with their parents, does it spur intellectual development? For Grow With the Flow parents, this would be a whole new way to foster intelligence.

Perhaps I should explain that this is not about teaching deaf or hearing-impaired children to sign. This is about using sign with hearing infants before they have the oral motor control to communicate verbally.

Jessica Egan, a graduate student at Colorado State University, is fascinated by Infant Sign Language. She signs with her infant daughter, so when it came time for her thesis, the topic of the possible good effects of signing was a natural.

She’s using some items from the checklists in Chapter 12 of Grow With the Flow: “Discovering Your Child’s Intelligence River,” as a way to describe infants’ growth. It seemed like fun to both of us to set up a table in the Coffee Shop for people working with Infant Sign language – a guest forum where Jessica, her research compatriots, and others interested in the possible usefulness of signing with infants can trade ideas and impressions. Welcome!

Visit this new forum in the Coffee Shop