In American Sign Language (and other signed languages, as well), specific facial behaviors provide both affective and grammatical information; that is, particular constellations of facial behaviors signal structures such as conditional clauses, negation and relative clauses. Given the multifunctionality of facial behaviors in signed languages, chronicling their development in children can inform our understanding of the relationship of language to other symbolic systems, for example, affect. Such developmental questions, as well as coding concerns, will be discussed in the context of our findings on the acquisition of non-manual behaviors from Deaf children of Deaf parents acquiring American Sign Language.