Baby Sign

by Rachel on February 16, 2010

I have been attracted to the idea of baby sign language since my son was about 6 months old. I love the idea of being able to communicate before he can talk. Here and there I have tried to teach him a few simple signs, with no success. I even downloaded the “Baby Sign” application on my iPhone so that I could learn the signs to teach him. Well, it hasn’t been that simple. I haven’t felt that I’ve had enough time to spend teaching him the signs and it is frustrating when he doens’t pick them up. Now at 14 months, the pointing has gotten old quickly, so I figured it was time to reintroduce the signs.

This time, my experience has been much better. I started out with the sign for milk, for when he wants to nurse and he picked it up in only a few days. Now I think he’s begun to over use it! Next I taught him the sign for “more” when he wants more of what ever I’ve given him (food, drink, etc.). He literally started using the sign after only 2 minutes of me showing him the sign for more. It is so neat to see him finally picking these things up! I suppose other mothers can teach their children with patience at a much yonger age, but I didn’t have enough patience to try time after time with no success.

We are now working on, please, thank you, water and juice. I am confident that he’ll pick these up with in the next week or so. It was so obvious to me that he always knows what he wants and if I can give him the tools to tell me, then it makes both of our lives much easier! I don’t expect to teach him much more than a few signs, but just a few simple signs have gone a long way.

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Article by Rachel McFadden

Before motherhood I had an appreciation for our planet, but once I knew that I was bringing a new life into the world suddenly my urge to live a greener life was much greater. I knew that I must do my part to help create a beautiful place for my future generations to live. I take steps each day to reduce my carbon footprint. This blog is dedicated to documenting the changes I make in order to help others do the same.

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  • Sarah J

    My niece preferred to sign instead of talking. We learned all kinds of different signs to teach her and if we didn’t know or couldn’t find it, we made one up. She loved it.
    My son is 18 months and he uses “please” the most. I just taught him “all done” to sign when he was finished eating instead of throwing food on the floor. That one has been a blessing! Although, now when he doesn’t want to do something, he signs “all done”. Another helpful one is “more”.
    Good luck! :)

  • http://www.babysignlanguageshop.com kathyn

    I teach baby sign language classes and I am a certified instructor. We offer classes and products like dvds, books about child development and kits. Our video dictionary has 150 american sign language signs and some on this dvd are baby modified. These signs were chosen by parents and teachers and our most popular words are the mealtime ones: eat, drink, more cereal, all done, and bib. This is a grreat resource for anyone who knows how to sign but wants to learn more. It is alphabatized too so you can look up a sign you need. I KNOW I am doing a sales pitch and I did not want to …..I just get carried away sometimes about baby sign language. Happy Signing!!

    • http://www.greenbabiesblog.org Rachel McFadden

      Thanks for sharing!

  • http://lynifer.blogspot.com Lynanne M

    I love baby sign. One great thing is that you are teaching them another language that they can use throughout life. We started signing a little from the beginning. I knew that we probably wouldn’t see anything signed back to us until at least 10 months, but we were so happy when he did start to sign every now and then. We don’t use the signs all the time, but when we see LJ sign something, I remember how much I would love to teach him more signs, and know more myself.

  • Maria W.

    Yea teaching your baby to sign is Great! I had my first child during my first year of college (i was at a community college). But less then a year latter when i joined his father at RIT(up state NY) and our lil one was at the campus day care while we were in classes they started teaching him sign. RIT has a big NTID school (school for the deaf). So some of the kids were either deaf them selves or had deaf parents. It was a great experience for him. We never had melt downs because he could communicate to us what he wanted.(we knew signs from having classes with deaf students and always having interpreters in all of our classes). Now our second Child who just turned one has been signing stuff to us for 2 or 3 months now because our older one (who just turned 5) and my self and husband have used the sign along with saying and showing him what we are talking about sense he was born. The important thing to remember is that starting them early is good even tho you do not see any results at first. It is like talking to them you talk to them all the time from the time they are born even though they can not speak back but it teaches them how to form sounds that will eventually become words. Weather you start at birth or wait till they are older it is a great asset for a child because not only is it a great tool to express them selves but it is another language that they can use for the rest of their lives.

    • http://www.greenbabiesblog.org Rachel McFadden

      I guess I was having a hard time because I had to learn the sign first myself, just takes a little bit of dedication! I love that its a language they can use for the rest of their lives!

  • http://lillybcrafts.blogspot.com Austin B.

    Hi Rachel,
    We signed early with Nathan it was a great experience! Even at 28 months he’ll still sign for “please”. I think because we did it fairly early, it’s something he can recall without even thinking about it. When he’s tired or promted for “please”, we get lots of the word and the sign together, like he’s trying to make sure we get the message one way or the other! We also worked with “more” which was a huge help before he picked up a lot of his current language. It’s applicable in so many situations! My mom and my sister both know a lot of sign and that was a huge help, since Eric and I didn’t! We even made up some signs for things like “all done”.

    I did have one girl friend whose son learned the sign for “please” and was shocked to realize it did not guarantee him the desired item! He was in a Toys-R-Us signing frantically to no avail! Guess there’s no prefect system…

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