By Walfajri

A baby has an instinctive need to communicate. He/she can communicate his or her desires and needs much earlier than we know. A baby uses baby signs as his/her pre-verbal forms of communication.

A key to understand what your baby is telling you and to feel what he/she needs is by leaning baby signs.

Let’s imagine your baby want to tell you that he/she is hungry or thirsty, or you need to guide your baby on safety by using signs such as ‘stop’ or ‘hot’. It is impossible by just talking verbally to your baby. You need using appropriate baby signs.

The advantages and effectiveness of baby signs for hearing a baby in amazing way were shown by scientific studies. Researches explain that signing babies learnt to talk earlier, had larger vocabularies, and understood more words. Researches also show that signing babies got the higher score in intelligence tests than non-signing babies. Furthermore, they had more self-confidence.

5 Easy Ways to Start with Baby Signs.

1. Start early. Start communicating with your baby using baby signs in your daily routine, even from a few weeks of his/her age. Say the word when you make the sign and point to the object. Sometime, a baby can shape his/her hands and make signs from 6 months.

2. Concentrate on a few signs at a time. Start with some simple signs like milk, dog, ball, doll, etc. You can build more and more baby signs into your baby sign language vocabulary over time.

3. Keep it fun! Use visual clues to build some vocabularies of baby signs. Say words when you sign an object from the books that you're reading together with your baby. The more relevant the baby signs are for your baby the more likely your baby wants to communicate with you.

4. Involve the family. The more a baby is exposed to baby signs the faster he or she will learn. Therefore, encourage older brothers or sisters, your partner, grandparents and other persons that care for your baby, to apply baby signs when communicating with him/her.

5. Don't let the sceptics get to you. Many people may tell you that baby signs slow down speech development. Baby signs were developed for hearing babies. If you're learning baby signs based on your country's deaf community language - e.g. British Sign Language (BSL) or American Sign Language (ASL) - then an advantage for your baby is he/she will master a skill that enable him/her to communicate with the deaf community in later life.