While working in a private practice setting I consistently worked with children who were approximately two years of age. The primary concern of most parents in the clinic was that their children were not talking. During the session the child’s social interaction during the session and also from how interested they were with communicating were always a determinant on which program would be most beneficial for the child. Many times with children who were very interactive and interested in communicating they would be introduced to sign due to it being easy for the child to understand and also use to communicate.

While introducing sign to many my clients at the clinic, I was consistently asked by the parents if the child would sign only and never want to talk or delay their speech development even longer. I would always inform the parents that giving the child a means to communicate is the primary reason that sign is so beneficial, secondly research has revealed that babies who use sign to communicate have been found to be able to understand and use the structure of language better when compared.

Many parents may believe that using sign with babies may appear to only be beneficial for children who have speech delays and may delay speech for those children who are considered to be normal developing.

Research that was performed by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn conducted a study that revealed that children who were exposed to sign were able to speak sooner than their counterparts who were not exposed to sign and also increased syntactical skills. With teaching sign language, parents primarily present sign as they would speak verbally (e.x., big dog) which allows for babies to understand the order of language. With this understanding when spoken word appears they understand that the same rules apply. With the results from this study and also the understanding of how to present sign it is clear that using sign language does not delay a child’s speech but yet improves their speech skills.