Alan Fogel's Infancy: Baby Sign Language

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Language is a big part of development for an infant and is used in their everyday life. Language can be more than just talking, it can be movement and gestures also. Baby Sign Language is a product that advertises the teaching of sign language to infants starting at age six to eight months. This product claims to help babies communicate so they cry less, boost brain development, increases IQ and helps parents understand their child better. The benefits are greater than the disadvantages of the product and this can be seen in writings by Alan Fogel, Elizabeth Kirk and Lauri Nelson. In Alan Fogel’s book, “Infancy: Infant, Family and Society, he describes the cognitive development in infants. Cognitive development is one of the main reasons babies can pick up on sign language and why it is helpful. Sometimes when an infant is crying, parents have a hard time figuring out what they want. Baby Sign Language can help children tell the parent exactly what they want so the parent doesn’t have to keep guessing. Infants go through a stages of sensorimotor development. One of these stages is secondary circular reactions. With this, infants start realizing that …show more content…

One disadvantage is stress on the parents because they have to take the time to learn something new (Kirk, 2013). Learning sign language is time consuming and can be costly. This can be hard for parents who aren’t fully invested in learning it. Thus, causing more stress than needed. In some cases, sign language can cause an infant to lack normal communication skills. An infant may not want to start verbally communicating because they only want to use the gestures that they are used to. Lack of verbal communication can become stressful for the parent and also make it hard for the child socially. Parents who teach their children sign language would have to use regular speech on a daily basis also so that lack of any normal skills won’t be

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