In this paper, we propose and analyze a high-order uniform method for solving boundary value problems (BVPs) for singularly perturbed nonlinear delay differential equations with small shifts (delay and advance). Such types of BVPs play an important role in the modeling of various real life phenomena, such as the variational problem in control theory and in the determination of the expected time for the generation of action potentials in nerve cells. To obtain parameter-uniform convergence, the present method is constructed on a piecewise-uniform Shishkin mesh. The error estimate is discussed and it is shown that the method is uniformly convergent with respect to the singular perturbation parameter. Moreover, a bound of the global error is also derived. The effect of small shifts on the solution behavior is shown by numerical computations. Several numerical examples are presented to support the theoretical results, and to demonstrate the efficiency and the high-order accuracy of the proposed method.