Why Should Parents Should Implement American Sign Language?

Becoming a parent can be one of the most challenging periods of a person’s life. As parents quickly learn, communicating with their children can be a pivotal point in their parenting careers. Even from the earliest toddler days, children aim to communicate their needs of hunger, discomfort, or stimulation. Most, if not all, parents have experienced the wailing of an unsatisfied pre-verbal child who knows what it wants, but not how to convey it! Parents should implement American Sign Language (ASL) into their lives. It is a logical, easy, and beneficial way to solve this communication barrier.
The signs themselves are logical. Some hand gestures that adults and children make are already similar to ASL sign. For example, the sign for “eat” is
Studies have shown that it can improve language skills in children. Children who sign have larger vocabularies and can form more elaborate sentences by the age of 2. (Goodwyn) They have also been shown to have a more intimate relationship with their parents from an earlier age. There is evidence that parents who sign with their children engage in more “joint attention”. This is an instance where parent and child are both engaged in watching the same event or object and they are both aware of this (Vallotten). A perfect example of this is a trip to the zoo. The signs for animals are diverse and interactive. The activity of looking at animals and learning the signs for each of them not only can further language development, but also allows for important bonding between parents and children. Parents also respond to their children better and overall have less parenting stress when they incorporate signing. (Vallotten) This is most likely due to decreased occurrences of whining and crying when a need is unmet. Parents deal with conflict every day, but signing can reduce a portion of
Rachel Coleman, the creator of the well-known series, Signing Time, has made her experiences with her two daughters public. Her eldest daughter, Leah, was born deaf and her younger daughter, Lucy, was born with spina bifida and cerebral palsy. After discovering at 14 months that Leah was deaf, she immersed her family in sign language. By 18 months, Leah’s language skills greatly surpassed other children her age. With only sign, she could communicate much more effectively than other children that had not been taught sign language. Doctors told Rachel that her other daughter, Lucy, would probably never speak or be able to sign with her sister. Rachel describes the moment that Lucy, who was 2 at the time, signed her first sign. Despite the reservations of the doctors, Lucy slowly learned sign and began to speak soon after. She even attended a mainstream kindergarten at 5 years old and excels in her