Baby Signs story

[HuntBerg at aol.com]

I also have a positive Baby Signs story to share that comes from a different
perspective.  As an SLP, last year I assessed a 29 month old girl whose
parents were concerned about her speech/language development. When her
daughter was less than a year old, the mom learned of Baby Signs through the
local news media and decided to pursue it.  At that time, the mom suspected no
developmental difficulties.  At age 29 months the child had age-level
comprehension and, using the CDI, had 130 signs/symbolic gestures but only 14
expressive words which had to be assigned meaning in context(mostly
reduplicated syllables produced with a small range of consonants).  All other
areas (e.g., gross/fine motor, cognitive, feeding) were age-appropriate and
hearing was WNL. Turns out she had (and still has) significantly delayed
phonological development.  Her lexicon of referential gestures and signs,
although still relatively small for her CA, enabled her to be an active and
fairly competent communicator during social interactions with her parents.
She is currently in speech therapy with a phonological processes approach.  As
an SLP, I find the research by Acredolo & Goodwyn most encouraging.  When
talking to parents I often barrow their analogy that just as we provide pre-
crawling infants with "walkers" to move, when children are constrained in
their ability to produce spoken words, consider alternate forms of symbolic
communication to augment their speech.
Mary Hunt-Berg, Ph. D., CCC-SLP