Every teacher has that one student who leaves them forever changed. For music teacher Denise Schmitz, it was a deaf child she met while teaching in the West Des Moines public school system. The interactions between the student and his interpreter left Schmitz fascinated with American Sign Language. She started to incorporate sign language into some of the songs she taught, and she started to see applications for the language in other areas of her life.

When Schmitz became pregnant in 2001, she studied how sign language could be used as an early form of communication with her child and benefit the baby’s cognitive development. Sign language worked with her son, and now she plans to teach other parents how to use it with their infants through her business.

“Parents can reap the benefits of having interactions with their child earlier than if they had waited until their child was speaking,” Schmitz said.

Schmitz owns a business called Songs and Signs and is the director of the Music Together early childhood music program in residence at the Des Moines Symphony Academy. In February, she will expand her business with the Signing Smart curriculum, which is intended to enhance the verbal language development of babies ages 6 months to 2 years through playful exposure to sign language and songs.

Schmitz said babies can learn to sign at a very young age because signing builds off children’s gross motor abilities, which develop sooner than the fine motor skills necessary for speaking.

“When the kids can express their needs, it reduces a lot of tantrums and the guessing games,” Schmitz said. “The child can make the sign for ‘milk’ to tell Mom they want milk. When a child does a sign and is rewarded by getting something they want, they want to do more signs.”

About 130 signs are taught over the course of a 10-week Signing Smart beginners’ class. The signs are a combination of everyday words and phrases such as “more” and “all done,” and signs that fall under a category of “highly motivating signs for children” such as names for toys, animals and food.

The 45-minute classes are held once a week. Each class includes some music, large-group activities and a lesson. The lessons teach parents a three-pronged approach to introducing words to their babies through spoken words, sign language and some type of prop to further illustrate the words. For example, the child would hold a stuffed bear in his or her hands while the parent signs and speaks the word “bear.”

Schmitz said it usually takes six-month-old babies about five to seven weeks to start signing back to their parents. If they’re a year old, it could take half that time. She said parents who sign with their newborn babies may see the baby sign back by as early as 5 months of age.

The demographic of families Schmitz works with in Music Together classes, which she expects to be comparable with her Signing Smart classes, tend to be professional families. The parents are usually college graduates who follow research trends and want to expose their children to a variety of activities.

Melissa Bernhardt of Waukee has taken Schmitz’s Music Together classes with her 22-month-old daughter for the past year and a half and has enrolled her 3-month-old daughter in the Signing Smart program. With her firstborn daughter, Bernhardt taught her a few signs she learned from a book. Encouraged by how well that went, she wanted her newborn to also learn sign language.

“My older daughter really could interact with us earlier on before she could verbalize, and it made our lives easier when she could communicate her needs,” Bernhardt said. “We thought it would be nice to get the younger one in a structured class where she could probably more effectively learn the signs.”

Over the past few years, many studies have touted the benefits of sign language for infants. A study by the National Institutes of Health found that children who sign as infants are advanced linguistically and cognitively in preschool and had higher IQs in elementary school than non-signing children.

The creators of Signing Smart found a correlation with their curriculum and language development when they studied 165 infants and toddlers who took the Signing Smart classes.

• At 12 months old, Signing Smart children used an average of 25 signs and 16 spoken words, versus two to three words by non-signing children.      • By 18 months old, Signing Smart children used an average of 70 signs and 102 spoken words, versus the 10-50 words non-signing children used.      • Between 11 and 14 months, a majority of Signing Smart children began using signed/spoken sentences, about 10 months earlier than other children.      “We believe that language facilitates language,” Schmitz said. “By teaching your child sign language, it doesn’t keep them in any way from learning to speak, but actually has the reverse effect.”

Schmitz will offer three Signing Smart classes weekly starting in February, and she plans to expand her schedule to offer workshops for parents and additional class times. Visit www.songsandsigns.com for more information.