Check the research on baby signing, lady!

I get a lot of flack from the 50 plus generation for teaching my baby to sign. They can't understand why I would do it, they want to make sure that I am also teaching him how to talk, they are concerned that he may not be SAYING enough words, etc. My son has a 60 plus word vocabulary and you want to tell me he's not communicating with me? Hello! Here's the thing, I'm not teaching my son a second language, ASL. I am teaching him to communicate with me before his speech is solid. The research shows (YES the research) that signing babies' speech is often accelerated, their sentences come sooner, they have larger vocabularies, score higher on future IQ tests, and are more interested in books. Oh yeah...AND ITS FUN! So never mind what others tell you, signing with your baby is soooo worth it... Drs. Acredolo & Goodwyn did some of the original research that disputes any ideas that speech is delayed in signing babies, in fact, they found that speech is often accelerated as I mentioned above. You can see the summaries of some of the research here .