Should Your Baby “invent” ASL Signs?

Kids are an inventive bunch – “invisible friends,” Lego creatures or coloring outside the lines. It’s part of their personality formation. So it is OK to let your baby make up new signs, right? False – it will hinder, not help. If you wanted to learn French, would you cobble English slang with Russian syntax? Survival in Paris would be limited – and so would benefits of baby signing:

1. To socialize with other signing parents & babies

With ASL, you won’t limit this “secret language” between two people. Your child will socialize better at daycares and preschools that use a formalized sign system like ASL.

2. Out of respect to Deaf Culture

Even if your made-up sign is memorable, it’s often confusing to fluent ASL users. There are 20,000,000 deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in the U.S., many of whom may mistake your child’s made-up version of “apple” to mean “menstrual period.”

3. Early exposure to another language

Impatient to get your 1-year-old started on Mozart and Latin? Your too-young prodigy has limits. But ASL is one of the earliest languages you can teach, during the first 3 years when the brain produces its most lifetime synapses.