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10 KIDS BAY AREA NEWS GROUP THEFIRSTSIGNOFAHAPPY baby?Thesmile—andthat usually comes through by about 2 months. Before they can wave bye-bye or gesture for milk, babies develop their first social relationships by grinning. And really, what parent can't smile back? What researchers have found, however, is that babies and caregivers develop a rhythm to their smiles — babies take turns smiling as parents smile back. "There's a basic rhythm of com - munication," says Daniel Messinger, psychology professor at the Uni- versity of Miami, who has studied the significance of baby smiles. "Finding that one person starts and stops smiling, and the other does the same, it's the beginning of the social patterns that later become part of the pattern of language." By 8 months, he says, babies smile when they're looking at a toy, then turn that smile toward the adult. "It seems like they're sharing their positive experience with the adult," Messinger says. And soon after, that form of communication can expand to include gestures. NOT ONLY CAN BABY SIGNS relieve frustration and dimin- ish tantrums, they encourage a deeper connection between babies and parents — especially with fathers, who often don't share the intimacy with their babies that breastfeeding mothers do. "Before children talk, there's not a lot of expectation of what they know and what they can feel, what they can think," says Claire Vallotton, professor of human development and family studies at Michigan State University. With baby signs, she says, "parents are thinking about their children as thinking, feeling people, and that is happening earlier." Some parents haven't bought into the baby signing precepts. Above:EthanSchaetzle,1,usessignstoaskformoreeggsand plays on the floor with his dad, Paul, and brother, Leonardo, 3. Right: Madelyn Lara, shown here at 11 months, of Santa Clara, crawls around after learning baby signs in Campbell.