Baby Steps 2 Communication

Last summer I led a discussion at my Mother's and More group about the benefits of signing with infants and young children. My friend Karen attended the meeting as my guest. The talk was well received, and we were both surprised at the number of people who were actually interested in the topic.

It was, as Oprah says, an "A-Ha Moment."

So Karen and I had a little business meeting about what it might take to get something like this off the ground. Karen already had her own interpreting agency, Northern Indiana Communication Exchange, Inc. She did a little research, and I did a little research, and we checked out different companies that had teaching tools for a venture like ours. We found Sign 2 Me, and the rest is history.

We both became certified presenters through the Sign2Me company, and Karen added a couple of others who were interested in teaching classes, and we found a place to hold classes.

Jump ahead to this year...

Karen recently decided to throw this area of the business over to me to take care of. So I came up with a catchy little name, and have been trying to market like crazy. Registration numbers have been slow since our first classes last fall, but I am hoping that will change.

Signing with preverbal hearing children is a no-brainer, really. It helps them develop early communication before their spoken language is ready to develop, cuts down on frustration and tantrums as a result. Not to mention that research has shown that it does NOT hinder spoken language development, but rather enhances it. Add to that the benefits of developing better literacy skills, larger spoken vocabularies, higher IQ scores, and signing is a recipe for success academically. And learning through the classes is not as difficult as some parents think.

Hmmm. Maybe I should do a commercial...