Does Baby Signs use American Sign Language (ASL)?
A. Since the publication of the our book, many people have asked us how using the Baby Signs Program relates to American Sign Language, the official language of the deaf community. The simple answer is that the Baby Signs Program incorporates the most useful, “baby friendly” signs from American Sign Language and combines them with signs that babies and parents have created themselves and found particularly useful. When we first began our Baby Signs Research, we feared that parents of hearing babies would find ASL too overwhelming to learn in the short time their baby would use signs as a bridge to speech. We also knew that young babies, with their limited motor coordination, are not be able to master many of the complex “hand shapes” of ASL. Since for hearing babies using sign language is simply a temporary bridge to speech, our goal has always been to do what is easiest for babies and their parents. Our focus has not been to teach hearing babies a second language but to provide them w
