My husband and I decided (with the encouragement of our neighbor) to introduce sign language to our youngest when she was about eight months old. It was an amazing and easy process, and by her first birthday and she was signing like crazy, showing us signs for ‘nurse’ ‘more’ ’eat’ ‘all done’  ‘daddy’ and ‘mommy’ ’sleep’ and ’bath.’ (Note — she was also saying many of those words by her first birthday and we give some of the credit for that to the sign language system).

We used the “Sign With Your Baby” book and DVD set by Dr. Joseph Garcia. 

As I said, it was VERY easy to do and we learned the signs right along with her.  Dr. Garcia’s method, which is based on ASL (American Sign Language) encourages you to start out with a few of the most common and easy signs for a baby — eat, more and nurse or bottle.  By doing this gradually, parents don’t need to have a sign language cram session or become experts.  You learn right along with your baby, a few signs at a time.  We were surprised at how quickly our daughter learned to repeat the sign for more and nurse — she returned her first sign to us within two weeks of us introducing it.  And if you’re worried about whether signing delays spoken language, Dr. Garcia addresses this concern in his book.  He states that “A considerable amount of research supports the fact that children exposed to several languages early in life achieve higher levels of language competency later on.”  And, he cites research indicating that babies who use signs learned to talk more readily than their non-signing counterparts. That has certainly turned out to be the case with our daughter. She is currently 21 months old and she talks more than just about any 21-month-old I know. Too much, sometimes. (She’s rather bossy).

The selling point for us in deciding to introduce signing to our baby was the idea that giving her a way to communicate with us before she had spoken language would ease the frustration that all babies feel when they can’t communicate their wants and needs. 

It was a lot of fun to watch our daughter apply the signs we’d given her to use in one situation (such as ‘more’ for more food) to another situation.  For example, one time before her first birthday, my husband was letting her pull the cord to our ceiling fan and light, and she was delighted to see the light go on and off.  When Daddy set her down to continue folding laundry, she gave him the ‘more’ sign and pointed to the light. 

I’m obviously endorsing this process.  And I’ll add that I think Dr. Garcia’s Signing Kit would make a great baby shower present.  Additional resources from Dr. Garcia (such as a Yahoo group, news clips and even a clip from the movie “Meet the Fockers” in which baby Jack uses his sign language to communicate) are available here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Try a random post.

• Be wedgie free!
• Use dominant art to set the tone
• Wii Game Giveaway for Birthday Parties
• Would you put your eggs in this basket?
• Fab Finds Friday