So our baby is 6 months old, and we're about to start using baby sign language, which I view with some trepidation -- oh, great, another language to stumble around in. On the other hand, kids don't seem to develop very big repertoires of signs, so even though I'm sleep-deprived and distracted, I think I can remember two dozen signs. More. Eat. Drink. Cat. Dog. Thank you. Please. Outside.

This decision is pretty representative of the decisions we've made overall. In an interesting scholarly paper analyzing some hearing families who use baby sign, the authors (Pizer, Walters, Meier) write that "baby signing fits neatly into the parenting ideologies prevalent in the professional class in the United States. These ideologies value early communication with infants and promote the adaptation of the physical, social, and linguistic environment to their perceived needs." Yes, that's us. Professional class; adapt the environment to the infant's needs; promote early communication.

One of my favorite books to read in preparation for parenthood was David Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings">, a vast (and very readable) cross-cultural and historical account of the cultural meanings of various stages of parenthood and childhood. There (and on his website, here) he lays out two broad models for when cultures decide that children should be socialized. One model he calls "pick when ripe," which is used in societies where babies and toddlers are largely ignored, may not be named until they're weaned, and undertake what he calls a "village curriculum" -- that is, not a formal education, but running errands, running messages, and doing small-scale versions of adult tasks. The other model, indicative of industrialized societies (Europe, Japan, the US), he calls "pick when green." In that model, it's never too early to socialize babies. Teaching signs to babies for use is pure "pick when ripe."

To be clear, we're not just teaching him how to say what he wants, which will supposedly make our lives easier, we're socializing him.
--We're socializing him into the notion that children's self-expressions are significant in some fashion -- too significant to be merely guessed at or ignored
--We're teaching him that children can have opportunities to display knowledge as soon as possible (and in fact, one of his roles already is to put on display what he can do; his "tricks")
--We're promoting socially appropriate behavior
--and we're promoting how to make one topic of communication the communication itself, which is what you get in a family with two highly verbal people.
--We're socializing him in how people interact with each other, at a more basic level (like how we take one-at-a-time turns when talking), as well as what are the platforms for further interaction.

It is not, I'll admit, about promoting an awareness of Deaf culture, or even building the start of basic fluency in American Sign Language, and I see that websites on baby signing promote this as a plus, including this dubious claim: "Should your baby continue to learn American Sign Language past his or her 3rd year, s/he will have acquired a 2nd or even 3rd language!" I mean, let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we.

There's a lot more to say on this topic, so I'll be posting more on this, including a summary of the research that evaluates the claims that teaching babies sign makes them smarter and verbally more precocious, and maybe I'll dig into some work from Australia about the predictors of verbal precocity.

Babel No More is a scientific book -- not in the sense that it's laden with charts and figures, and not because the action takes place in laboratories, but because it attempts to provide reliable information about language superlearners, that is, information that's not self-reported or anecdotal, but that can be verified, compared, and synthesized with other knowledge. And that's never been done before, not on this topic, of people who can speak a lot of languages and who have an easier time than others learning them.

Managed to remember to teach the sign for "dog" today. Also invented a sign for "outside," which I know is going to come back and haunt me -- the boy poking one finger through the other hand's closed fingers, over and over and over. But what the hell. And sometimes, we'll want to be outside.

Last weekend we went to NYC so I could meet up with my new agent, David Patterson, of Foundry Media, where this was waiting for me at the door:

It was good to talk, talk shop, talk books, talk writing, the whole thing. But first, we had to ogle my son, who loved the conference room and wasn't fazed by the business talk:

We're such language magpies around here. When the baby starts teething, we'll give him sushki, Russian for "dry little things." (Picked this up from a New Yorker restaurant review.) His pacifier we call a "suck suck." The toy his mother sewed him she coined "a stick of giraffe," after another toy came, a gift, which she called "a sack of tiger." In his nose are mocos, Spanish for "snots." And this morning he became Señor Fragil. And then there are the baby signs: in semi-regular rotation: cat, dog, eat, more.

Needless to say, we've talked more about signing than we've actually signed. DOG and CAT get into regular rotation, as does MORE. Other than that, we're using spoken English. All throughout the last couple months, the baby's said phantom words a couple of times. For instance, you ask him some question, and he responds with something that sounds like "yes." Dad double takes, Mom double takes, and we ask each other: Did you hear that? Who's talking in the baby's mouth? (Babies, of course, precipitated the birth of ventriloquism: up to about three months ago, I could give voice to stuffed animals and he'd look at the stuffed animal, but now he looks at me. It's not enough motivation to learn how to throw my voice, but I do see where the impulse comes from.)