Just wanted you all to know about some info..

1.Baby signs..
I don't know how many of you know about this but recent research shows that signing to your pre verbal babies help them pick up signs which foster early communication & reduces communication distress & also expediates verbal language skills...simple signs adapted from ASL(American Sign Language) to indicate for basic needs have been taught to babies w/a lot of positive feedback ..
I have been signing (along w/speaking) to Tia on : bye bye,thank you,no more,milky,cap so far..she still doesn't have the motor skills to sign back but she definetly loves watching my hands when I do them..

2.On CDS-Child directed speech
...earlier research used to suggest that speaking in motherese(baby talk) helps children speak faster but recent research proves that speaking in complete sentences & using true words help children pick up language at a higher rate as well as accelarated dev compared to peers who had been exposed to plain babytalk..infact this was my thesis when I had to compare sentence constructions of children after being exposed to a story w/a higher complexity than their age..the children who were exposed to higher complexity spoke w/that higher complexity features compared to children who were spoken to w/baby language..

Hope this info helps...more detailed info on these topics are of course available on the web..you can check out the ASHA(American Speech Hearing Association)'s site in case you are interested.

love
sush Jayashree replied. Hi Sush,
I too had read about this long time back and so had started signing to my son...

I did not get any good books on this in our library, will chk out the website for more info.

Love to Tia ...
Take care,
J