Baby sign language borrows some signs — like "milk," "more," "all done," "mommy" and "daddy" — from American Sign Language in order to enable hearing parents to achieve some basic sign- and gesture-based communication with their infants before they are capable of speech. In my view, the more people who sign in this world, the better. And I defy you to suppress a smile when a baby signs "more" by bouncing her chubby little fingertips together.
But part of me also objects when baby signs are marketed in a vacuum, isolated from their origins in the full, rich American Sign Language that I know. The increasingly mainstream trend — driven by parenting books and how-to videos — is largely being pushed by hearing people, for the benefit of hearing children. It seems like a major missed opportunity to take advantage of the contributions that deaf people — the primary users (and originators) of signed languages — can offer to the world.
Leading proponents of baby signing say that it's a way for parents to develop stronger bonds with their babies, and that it has benefits for language development and cognition, though the evidence for this among hearing children is weak. Signing is also clearly valuable for children whose brains might be better suited to visual rather than verbal communication: not only deaf children, but also those with autism and other forms of cognitive difference.
The baby sign language phenomenon connects to what culturally deaf people celebrate as "Deaf Gain:" the notion that all of humanity can gain significant benefits and insights from Deaf visual-spatial contributions to the world, including A.S.L. and all its rich linguistic possibilities. Deaf friends I talk with applaud hearing parents for learning some signs with their children, and express hope that, someday, more people will use a signed language on an everyday basis, making communication easier for all of us.
But the developers and users of baby sign language don't necessarily see A.S.L. fluency as a goal. Many of the books and websites actually assure parents that they don't need to learn full A.S.L., and also that using baby signs won't impede a child's spoken language acquisition.
Most striking for me, when I browsed top-hitting baby sign videos on YouTube, I found several that featured stretches of verbal speaking and singalong, without any captions. I was watching visual fragments of my own language, framed by spoken English, which excludes me. I felt disjointed, oddly erased.
Finally, there is one more reason I feel ambivalent when my hearing acquaintances tell me they are using baby signs with their children. Often, I notice that these acquaintances are people who have never attempted to use any sign language with me — even though I am deaf, even though I am the one person they know who could most benefit from visual communication. This omission strikes me as a huge loss, even a huge injustice.
