Contents
Of interest to sign with baby …
Why? To help him express emotions and sensations before he can speak. And interact more easily with his environment than by crying, with the assurance of being understood.
With what ? With a simple gesture borrowed from the French Sign Language, the language of communication of the deaf.
How? By imitation, in a playful way, the child learns a certain number of signs.
Starting at what age ? From 6 months, when the baby begins to play with his hands.
The psycholinguist’s opinion
For Alex Cristia, psycholinguist, “Different research has shown that signing does not prevent the child from speaking, nor does it slow down his learning to speak. The studies, carried out especially in the United States where the “baby sign” has been very developed for ten years, have shown neither a positive nor a negative impact on language learning. This usage also does not affect the quantity of words that the child integrates, at the same age. Perhaps because gestures don’t quite use the same network of connections as speech in the brain. ”
At the nursery, “we sign all the time”!
“The more one signs by speaking, by singing, the more the child will seize this means of communication. »Explains Ludivine Rivet, Director of the Little Red Chaperons crèche in Gennevilliers (92). She tells us about her experience.
” For two years, the whole team practices sign language. We are also in the process of making a DVD by filming us when we sign, for parents. As soon as they arrive, at 2 and a half months, we talk to the babies and we support the word with a sign. For example, to a baby who is offered to go to bed, we say “you are going to sleep” and we make the sign “sleep”. We sign all the time! We sing while signing, when we read a story, at mealtime … Children have the motor capacity to sign from 6-8 months. And the first sign that everyone makes is “again”!
We just sign the important word : eat, blanket, dad, work, water, fear… so that the child can easily reuse it to express himself. It’s awesome. At the nursery, it is obvious that the act of signing calmed the children. At an age when they want to do it alone, to make themselves understood by adults, they no longer need to use crying and aggression to be listened to. From 8 months to the assured acquisition of language, we feel that they cannot yet communicate easily through speech. The sign is liberating. »
“With gestures, my daughter expresses her emotions better”
The testimony of Anne-Laure, mother of Joane, 16 months:
“I took training with my husband and our childminder to learn how to sign with my daughter. Joane was 10 months old, I felt she wanted to speak, but couldn’t pronounce the words. Suddenly, she was quite frustrated and screamed a lot. We started by singing nursery rhymes to him and signing a few words. But that didn’t seem to interest him. After a few months, she started signing. His first sign was “again”. Today, Joane is 16 months old and says words like children her age. Corn thanks to the signs, she is able to better express her emotions. For example, she knows how to sign “I’m happy” or “You’re beautiful”. This learning makes it possible not to wait for the child to speak correctly to communicate with him. “
Nearly 200 gestures allow adults to communicate, generally with their hands. The child knows how to point the finger on his own. And he loves to say hello, goodbye, bravo and shhh… and repeats them endlessly. For pure pleasure!