Small Talk gets boost when DeNiro movie shows baby signing
When results were published last June of the first 20-year research study about teaching sign language to hearing infants, Susan Hagel’s business got a boost.
“And then of course there was Meet the Fockers,” she says, the 2004 Robert DeNiro movie in which the baby and grandpa communicate in sign.
“After that came out they’d say, ‘Is that what you do?’ And I’d say, ‘Yes, but not those signs.’ There were naughty signs in there.”
In 2001, Hagel started Small Talk in Shorewood to teach sign language to infants, toddlers and their parents and other adult caregivers. The idea is to give families a way to communicate before their babies can talk.
“It decreases crying, because they sign what they want. My slogan is, to communicate by signing not whining,” Hagel says.
She says the new research shows other benefits: It encourages spoken language, it increases IQ points for the developing baby’s brain and it even raises SAT scores 20 years later.
Her day job is to be a rec therapist for Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, and she’s also taught sign language to adults for 30 years. When she first learned about sign language for hearing infants, “I said to myself, I can teach this.”
She devotes about one day a week to Small Talk, first marketing her services for community education classes. She then went to area hospitals and her group class is now included in many of their new parent education offerings. Her goal is to build her business to the point where she can go part-time at Sister Kenny.
In a two-hour session, she teaches the signs for 55 key words, shows the video she also created, and in many cases includes the book she wrote, at about $45 per family. “I teach everything that you need to know in that time,” Hagel says.
Her next move is to market to child care centers. By age 2, kids can learn the signs for emotions, which helps cutfrustration for students and teachers, Hagel says.
“When I first started I spent a lot of time explaining what it was, and now I don’t have to explain,” Hagel says.
Susan Hagel, Small Talk: 612.889.0780; smalltalksign@aol.com; www.signlanguageforbaby.com
