A few years ago, I had a friend whose Granddaughter was learning sign language to help her communicate before she could speak.At the time I thought it was strange, but before I became pregnant I heard about more parents who were teaching their hearing children sign language. It made sense, babies and toddlers are unable to speak but understand language and often become frustrated at their inability to get what they want.
Many people who have tried teaching their babies to sign and say that it really helps with the terrible two’s. As toddlers they are less frustrated because they can communicate with their caregivers and get what they need and want.While I was pregnant I started to look into different programs and books to help you teach your baby signs. Joseph Garcia’s Sign with your Baby seemed to be the best. It comes with a book, DVD (you can get a VHS video if you still haven’t made the plunge to DVD but I have to ask why?), and a reference card. You can find used copies on eBay. I read the book when Georgia was about 4 months old, and I tried using a few signs with her like milk, eat, and more. I quickly got bored and slowly stopped doing the signs.
Last week Jay decided to throw the DVD in the player to watch. It was very cute all these babies doing signs and the parents seemed happy with the results. The nice thing about the DVD is that you could see how to actually do the signs. So we decided to try again. It suggests the signs “milk”, “more”, and “eat”. We also decided to try dog, drink and water.
After about 4 days, Georgia was in here high chair eating strawberries. She finished what she had been eating and it looked like she was signing “more”. So I gave her a few more, when she was done, she signaled more again. It was very exciting that she learned that quickly and she looked so proud of her new language.
You can get a variety of books and flashcards to help teach your baby how to sign:
Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, New Edition
Has anyone else tried signing with their baby?
Tags: baby, parenting, motherhood, signing with your baby, ASL, Joseph Garcia, communicating with your baby
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I have also done sign language with my little boy (not so little now, he is 2!). We started when he was about 8 months old. He would screech at the top of his lungs when he wanted something and I would go through the five or six things he would screech for until he was happy. We started off by teaching him the basics things like milk and tired. I still remember the first day he started crying and frantically signing milk all at the same time. We now have a collection of the Signing Time videos which have been so great. He asks to “watch Times” all throughout the day and doesn’t care if he never watches anything else. I am going to do this with all of my kids!
Leisha I definitely recommend signing to anyone with a baby, it’s so exciting when they make their first sign. It is nice to hear success stories from other parents.