Signing up: Family discovers a way for their 2 young children to communicate

When Leah Coleman was a year old, her parents found out she was profoundly deaf.

It was a world-rocking discovery, to say the least. Her mother, Rachel, had grown up as the fifth of nine children in the boisterous, musical De Azevedo family, where she was rather shy and reserved until she learned to express herself through music. She taught herself how to play the guitar, began writing songs and started a band.

And when she met and married Aaron Coleman and had Leah, music continued to be a part of their lives. They sang and told stories to their little girl; they took her to concerts and band practices. But they began to notice she didn't respond to noise.

"One in a thousand children is born deaf, for no apparent rhyme or reason," says Rachel. Leah was simply a victim of the odds.

Rachel's priorities changed; she put down her guitar and picked up sign language.

"We looked at all the options for a deaf child — cochlear implants, oral training, sign language. We talked to a lot of experts. We decided we wanted to go with sign language. She may eventually learn to speak. But for now, this has given her a language."

They were blown away at how fast Leah picked it up. At 14 months, she had no communication skills. "By 16 months, she had surpassed what children her age could do. She could tell us what she wanted; she had the ability to negotiate. While other kids would point and whine, she could tell us exactly what she wanted." By age 2, Leah had a vocabulary of hundreds of words and was learning to read.

At the time Leah was diagnosed, Rachel's sister Emilie, who lived next door, had her first child, Alex. As the two cousins grew up, Rachel began teaching Alex to sign, even though he is not hearing impaired, so that he could communicate with Leah. She also began teaching children at her neighborhood preschool some of the basic signs. "I was amazed at how quickly very young children — some as young as 9 months — picked up sign language," says Rachel.

The Colemans began noticing something else. Leah rarely had tantrums. "We noticed the same thing with Alex. Because they had communication skills, they could tell us what they wanted." They began looking into research on other benefits of sign language for all children. "One study followed baby signers for six years and found their IQs were 12 points higher than non-signers."

There were disappointments, there were frustrations. "I remember feeling totally overwhelmed," says Aaron. "It was like looking at a mountain you had to climb, wondering how you would ever get over it."