More and more families are turning to sign language and there are a million reasons why! When our first son, David, was born in 2014, I had no idea how baby sign language would greatly impact our lives. Being able to communicate with him at such a young age not only helped him foster a love for language and learning, but it has also helped him grow into a very confident young communicator.

We were blessed with our second son, Zeke, in 2018 and we were able to reap the benefits of baby sign language all over again with him. All these years later and I am still reminded daily as to why I am such a believer in baby sign language. Signing with your baby is something that you will always be proud of doing!

There has been a ton of research related to the topic of "Baby Sign Language" and I am still blown away by what I have learned and witnessed over the years. Here are just a few incentives to sign with your baby!

DID YOU KNOW THAT SIGNING WITH YOUR BABY:

1. boosts baby's brain development
2. is a fantastic bonding experience
3. has social and emotional benefits
4. promotes early language skills
5. teaches them a real language

Check out my YouTube video about all the benefits of teaching baby sign language if you would like to learn more. https://youtu.be/iW8WU5NjvGo

At first, I didn't understand how teaching my baby ASL would be more beneficial than teaching her any other language. Kris explained that language is processed in the left side of our brains while visual stimuli is processed in the right side of our brains. This meant that when I was talking to my daughter while using signs I was actually engaging both sides of her brain simultaneously! How cool is that? ----- Whitney Bastien

Learning ASL helps develop and strengthen a crucial component in baby's brain. Studies show long-term cognitive benefits as well. Such as;

• Earlier reading skills
• Larger spoken vocabularies
• better grades in school
• higher IQ's

When we are signing with our babies we are getting down on their level and actively engaging with them in this way. This requires us to pay more attention to our facial expressions and eye contact. We are also more aware of the fact that we are labeling and assigning words to objects as we speak to our baby and this helps remind us we are truly describing the world to them!

Signing allows our 8 month old baby to share their world with us! It's simply incredible! ----- Justine Connors

Signing with our newest baby has been a wonderful bonding experience for our whole family. My older kiddos love teaching the baby and showing him new signs. They feel like they have a little secret language together! ---- Dana Sheffield