Baby, what’s your sign?

A baby is howling furiously. Her mother proffers various objects -- a cracker, some milk, a toy -- but the child only becomes more enraged. She is old enough to shake her head “no” but not old enough to say what she wants. It’s a scene as old as humanity itself.

Megan French avoided such trauma with her daughter, Sydney, by teaching her sign language starting at 9 months. When Sydney wants milk, she makes a squeezing motion like milking a cow. When she needs her diaper changed, she pats her hips.

Now 2 years old, Sydney is talking more and signing less, but the signs have helped her express herself during the difficult phase when she knows exactly what she wants but can’t always control her lips and tongue well enough to speak the words.

“It’s fantastic. She’s not a typical toddler with tantrums,” said French, who initially learned the signs from a book and then brought Sydney to a weekly baby sign language class in Redondo Beach. “She can talk about things, so we seldom see frustration from her.”

Baby sign language is still largely the province of enrichment-minded parents who might also enroll their toddlers in music, Spanish or swimming lessons. But there are indications that the movement has expanded beyond the well-heeled fringes since the first guide hit bookstores about a decade ago.

Last year, movie audiences saw the precocious L.J. signing for everything from “milk” to “doo-doo” in “Meet the Fockers.” Some local child-care centers, along with a handful of Head Start programs and kindergartens, are using baby sign to communicate with their young charges. Orange County and San Diego have well-developed networks of baby sign instructors, some of whom teach a pure form of American Sign Language -- the system used by the deaf -- and others who use a version of ASL in which some signs are tweaked to make their meaning more obvious.

The trend has been slower to catch on in Los Angeles County, with a smattering of classes offered through local child education centers and affiliates of national baby sign chains. But many parents have taught their children basic signing using books and DVDs.

“He really communicates with us in sign quite frequently,” said Joan Herrera, who took a class with her son Roberto, now 18 months old, at La La Ling, a baby store in Los Feliz. “When he wakes up in the morning, he does the ‘eat’ sign. When he hears something, he puts his hand up to his ear.... It’s great because it’s a way that you can really know what it is he wants.”

But will knowing sign language hold babies back from talking, just as bilingual children are said by some to be late bloomers? What is a child’s incentive to learn to speak when he or she can already communicate using gestures? Baby sign instructors say these are the most common concerns raised by parents.

ONE set of answers can be found in a series of studies by psychologists Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, who have since parlayed their research into a business. Their studies found that signing babies learned to speak sooner than control groups and that signing may help boost IQs well into childhood.

Acredolo, now a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis, stumbled on baby sign language in the 1980s when she noticed her daughter, Kate, using a sniffing gesture to signify “flower.”

In 1996, Acredolo and Goodwyn cowrote a baby sign language guide that has been translated into 14 languages. Two years ago, they founded Baby Signs Inc., which is among many companies, some regional in scope and some international, that certify instructors and produce baby sign books and DVDs.

Because parents are encouraged to speak a word as they are signing it, babies are exposed to spoken language as well as signing, Acredolo said in a phone interview. And because they begin using language sooner than other children, they are quicker to grasp the idea that an abstract symbol -- whether a gesture or a spoken word -- can represent a concrete thing such as a ball or a dog, Acredolo said.

Babies usually begin signing at 10 to 14 months and use it as their main means of communication until their speaking skills kick in. Parents describe the joy of seeing babies who are months shy of their first utterance express not only basic wants but also their excitement at spotting a dog, a balloon or an airplane.

“They clearly communicate far superior to babies who don’t sign,” said Barbara Granoff, who founded Orange County-based ABC Me Sign five years ago after teaching her own daughter to sign. “When I’m with a toddler that’s 2 years old and only has a handful of words and is still so fussy, it’s so odd for me.”

Acredolo’s Baby Signs system is based mostly on American Sign Language, with some signs modified to make their meaning more intuitively apparent or easier for young children to mimic. But Baby Signs’ largest competitor, Seattle-based Sign2Me, considers its pure ASL method a major selling point. Sign2Me’s instructors, some of whom were trained as ASL instructors for the deaf, shudder at the idea of babies learning an adulterated form of the language.

“As a parent, if you’re learning to do something with your child, why not take the time to learn a language?” said Laine Podell-Camino, who teaches Sign2Me-affiliated classes in Encino. “If you use a sign for ‘dog’ that no one else is using, there’s no transferability, and no one else will understand the child.”

Whichever version they choose, parents need to be diligent about using the signs or children may not pick them up, experts say.

Catherine Sandhofer is researching baby sign language as an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA. She decided not to teach it to her own two children because she wasn’t quite ready for the commitment, though she believes the academic research points to a clear benefit and no downside.

The only concern, she says, is misuse by adults like the competition-obsessed grandfather played by Robert De Niro in “Meet the Fockers,” who may adopt baby sign as part of a regimen to keep their children one step ahead.

“You can do baby sign and have a really good time and get a lot out of it, and that’s really wonderful,” Sandhofer said. “But if the goal in mind is to make your child really smart and increase their IQ, I don’t know about that goal.”

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Baby sign language

Places that offer instruction:

La La Ling, 1810 N. Vermont Ave., L.A., (323) 664-4400, www.lalaling.com

Baby Signs Inc., Redondo Beach area, location varies, (310) 719-7052

ABC Me Sign, Newport Beach and other Orange County locations, (949) 718-1391, www.abcmesign.com

A Mother’s Haven, 15928 Ventura Blvd., Suite 116, Encino, (818) 380-3111, www.amothers-haven.com

For more instructors and classes: www.babysigns.com or www.sign2me.com