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Origins of Baby Signing         Baby signing is the use of signs and gestures to communicate with your baby. Through regular exposure to signs from their parents / carers, babies will learn to recognise the signs and associate them with specific objects and needs. In time, they will begin to mimic the signs, just as a non signing baby will mimic actions like waving goodbye, clapping and pointing. Copying gestures is a natural part of child development and as members of the deaf community have always known, many babies as young as 7 or 8 months will start to mimic signs. Signing used to be exclusively used in the deaf community but over the last 3 decades many people began to wonder whether it could be used for hearing babies too. Much research has now been carried out and the results are amazing. Joseph Garcia is considered to be one of the main pioneers of signing with hearing babies. He lives in America and first became aware of babies signing to their parents through interaction with families in the local deaf community. He was amazed at how young the babies were and how clearly they could express their needs and desires through gestures. He conducted a study using 17 families. The parents actively exposed the children to signs from the age of 6 or 7 months and their response was closely monitored. He reported that babies exposed to signs consistently from this age can begin using them effectively from 8 or 9 months. This led him to develop one of the first systems to train parents to sign with hearing babies called ‘Sign with Your Baby’ in 1999. It has been a tremendous success. At the same time research was being carried out into ‘The Impact of Symbolic gesturing On Early Language Development’ by two Professors of Psychology at Universities in California, Linda Acredolo Ph.D and Susan Goodwyn Ph.D Their research spanned over several decades, using more than 140 families. The babies involved were all 11 months at the start and the families were divided into signing and non signing groups. The research highlights listed below are taken from the Baby Signs website:- Assessments The children were assessed using standardized language measures at 11, 15, 19, 24, 30 and 36 months. In addition, as many children as could be re-located at age 8 were assessed using the WISC-111 IQ test, the most commonly used measure of children’s intelligence. Results At 24 months, the signing babies were on average talking more like 27 or 28 month olds. This represents more than a three month advantage over non signing babies. In addition, the 24 month old signing babies were putting together significantly longer sentences. At 36 months signing babies, on average, were talking like 47 month olds, putting them almost a full year ahead of their average age – mates. 8 year olds who had been signing babies scored on average 12 points higher in IQ than their non signing peers. Conclusion Using signing helps children develop both language and cognitive skills." These results led Acredolo and Goodwyn to produce a book called “Baby Signs: How to talk with your baby before your baby can talk”. This is one of the first books specifically designed to teach hearing parents how to sign to their babies. Since these early days many other people have realised the benefits to be gained from signing with hearing babies and have produced courses to teach the skills needed to get started. Signing Hands courses offer a perfect place for parents / carers, to learn how to sign with their babies in a fun way, with other like minded parents.