Babies have always found a way to get their messages across. Even before they are born they communicate through movements and respond to external stimuli. However, until they learn to talk and make their point of view clear, babies can become very frustrated. They know what they want, but getting their parents to understand this requires a high level of understanding. When they cry, they know they need to calm their anxiety, but they don’t have enough tools to communicate it. Usually when you become a parent they tell you it could be one of four reasons: He’s bored and wants to play, he’s hungry and wants to eat, he has sleepy or needs a diaper change. It is relatively easy to determine what they want if we attend to these four premises, but the reality is that as our children grow their world expands and with it their tastes and desires as well. Then there may come a day when he wants a bottle, but instead of milk, he wants water. What do we do on these occasions?

Supporters of sign language say that this technique offers a non-verbal and non-auditory means to help babies communicate with their parents and caregivers. Using many of the skills that have been designed for the hearing impaired community, parents can teach their babies to convey what they want using their hands just as parents use their voice, face and hands to communicate. Essentially, sign language is designed for babies to use the skills they instinctively have to help their parents understand them.

Sign language gives babies a way to communicate what they want before their verbal skills are sufficiently developed.

• May reduce frustration for babies who are otherwise unable to communicate.
• Sign language can help build confidence and self-esteem. Supporters say this is because the baby feels that her parents are making an effort to understand them and this makes the baby feel more self-confident.
• It can make the transition to spoken language easier. Sign language offers the possibility of a natural and easier transition to verbal language. Babies who are familiar with signing are more motivated to learn to speak.

Just as babies get frustrated, we as parents must keep in mind that this teaching process is like any other, it takes time, it takes repetition and determination on the part of the parents. We cannot expect our children to start using sign language after a week because it is something that takes a long time to be recognized by our children’s brains.

Some warnings for parents:
This is a process that can take months.
-It is a process that requires group support, every time your child is at the house of grandparents, cousins, friends or family, they must help to follow the guides and signs that are constantly being repeated.
-The most important thing that we must take into account is that the probability that our children sign as they have been taught is very difficult since their motor skills and control over their joints are just developing, so you must try to recognize the signs. Signs relating to the signs that you have taught your child and the signs that he is doing.

I don’t know if it has happened to them, that they see a family with a baby and they are talking to it; and they think, but if this baby doesn’t understand anything why do they talk to him so much. Well, after years of deliberation, I have realized how important it is to talk to children even when they are 1 day old, not only because that helps the parent-child relationship, but because that communication is in charge of helping the mental and cognitive development of our children. We don’t realize it because they can communicate little to us, but they are sponges that absorb everything they can from their surroundings.

Since pregnancy, it is very important to talk to our baby, explain our emotions, tell them things. They understand more than we usually think, and constantly communicating something to them helps them retain information, helps them establish communication patterns, and helps them recognize words for their future vocabulary. Another very important thing, which is essential for the child, is to put words to what he knows, what he intuits or feels. They are closer to emotions, to the sensory-sensory world, they rationalize and intellectualize less than adults, they are more perceptive, this makes them aware of various situations that adults are often unaware of. For this reason it is good every time he is drinking water to tell him that this is water he is drinking, or every time he points to something tell him that it is the object, give him the name and repeat it constantly so that it becomes a pattern that he can remember in the future.

It is very common to hear parents say: “no, we don’t tell him anything because he is little and he doesn’t understand anything”. There are parents who do not tell their children what they are going to do or where they are going to go during the day, mothers who do not tell their babies that they are going to start working and that they are going to leave them in the care of another person, who do not They talk to him when some sad event happens. Children, no matter how young, understand through gestures, emotions and sometimes non-verbal communications, but not for this reason should we stop using them. It is important to involve our children in the day to day, that they understand what is to come and then capture what it is that we are telling them.

A child who is told, explained, given the opportunity to express himself, not only makes him feel more secure but also improves his self-esteem. They need to be listened to and deserve to be made to participate many times in the problems in which they are involved, they deserve to be respected as people. They are just as people as adults and deserve the same considerations. In this way, they are also trained in the very important exercise of communication: to express what happens to them, and before this, to be able to look at themselves and become aware of what happens to them as an a priori thing.
This is why we invite you to start conversations with your children, no matter how young they are, tell them all the details of the day, the schedule and the programming of their day to day that they will appreciate in the future.