To be honest, I'd never even thought about teaching kids to sign, but clearly a lot of people do it. This article has a few good reasons why it's worthwhile:
http://www.beagooddad.com/11/5-reasons-to-teach...
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Friends of mine have taught their son to sign. At 18 months he was commnunicating as well as our 2 year old, but it must take a lot of discipline as you have to use it all of the time - signing as you talk - and be committed to classes for the whole family and all carers to learn to sign.
It was interesting to watch, but in the long term I'm not sure it makes that much diffference. Speaking to a senior speech therapist they confirmed that in the long term there is no proven difference in how the children develop. Yes, they may be able to communicate slightly earlier, but their speech development can be slightly slower, so it's swings and round abouts. You also get some kids that talk early and some who talk late (3 is nothing unusual).
I don't think it's always kids not being able to communicate what they want, but not really knowing what they want - our son can easily tell us what he wants when he's calm, but when he's worked up he can't decide what he wants - he'll ask for something, you'll get it and he'll say "NO". That's going to be the case regardless of whether they are signing or not.
One thing I think it's really good for is removing the stigma of signing for deaf people - if a hearing child has been brought up with baby signing, they can adapt, relatively easily, to British Sign Language, which has to be a plus.
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