Infant Sign Language

[Pata]

Has anyone here taught thier baby to sign? If so, when did you start teaching them signs? What signs did you teach first? Can you recommend a book for me to read to learn more about signing? I would like to try this with my ds as he gets older, so any advice/help you can offer would be greatly appreciated :)!

[Rosie_0801]

You can start whenever you like. They will pick it up when they pick it up, just like they pick up English vocab.

 

If you are breastfeeding, "boobies" is a good sign to start with :) Then signs like "food," "drink," "more," "finished" "hot" and "work." Look up online and you'll find online dictionaries. What do you want a book for? You can't learn to sign from a book, but I think you'd get a bit from reading this. http://www.amazon.com/Signing-Smart-Babies-Toddlers-Strategy/dp/0312337035/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279526252&sr=8-4 I did, and we don't even use ASL :)

 

Rosie

[Pata]

Thanks Rosie, I didn't know you could look up the signs online, much easier (and cheaper :))! I was hoping a book would teach me the how's and why's of signing, but I think I'll stick to finding it online.

[Rosie_0801]

Tell me what you mean by the how's and why's of signing, and perhaps I can help.

 

Check your local library for the materials you have. They'll be a bit advanced for Junior, but they'll be good exposure for your daughter and yourself.

 

Rosie

[Donna]

I work in Early Intervention with kids 0-3 years old. I am a physical therapist but since we tend to cross disciplines when working with kids, I generally recommend signing with all the babies I work with pairing the signs with the words. Some of the easier signs to learn first are more, eat, and milk. You don't have to teach ASL and can make but your own signs for things or use some approximation of ASL that works for your child.

 

I signed to my kids as soon as they were sitting up in a high chair to eat 6-7 months. They picked up the signs on their own within a few weeks to a month depending on the child but I have worked with babies who take much longer. It really depends on the child. I do tend to find that the 1st sign is the hardest to learn. I attribute it to them needing to learn that it is communication. Subsequent signs generally tend to come more quickly. Consistency is the key.

 

My kids loved a video called "Baby Signs" when they were really little then preferred the "Signing Time" videos when a little older.

[Ginevra]

The "hows" of signing: Offer the thing you're trying to teach, say the word and perform the sign. So, I would say, "Do you want more crackers?" and I would make the sign for "more". Or I would say, "Do you want to read a book?" and make the sign for "book". I did this from early on, when they were just a couple of months old. They pick it up quickly. You can be teaching several signs in one period of time. Think of how they learn spoken words. The "method" is not that terribly important. If it's presented to them, they learn it, just as they learn spoken words if they are spoken to.

 

The "whys" of signing: Most babies can perform a sign before they can speak, so it helps open up communication earlier. It's so nice to know that your child wants "milk" or "blanket" or "book", rather than them just screeching incoherently. It also seemed to expand my children's vocabularies quickly. That was probably just because I was intentionally teaching them words and they were experiencing the meaning for the word through multiple learning channels.

 

Once they could speak well, we no longer signed.

[Pata]

Tell me what you mean by the how's and why's of signing, and perhaps I can help.

 

Check your local library for the materials you have. They'll be a bit advanced for Junior, but they'll be good exposure for your daughter and yourself.

 

Rosie

 

Wouldn't I love to check my local library! (I live in China now, so no libraries that I know of :)). I will be back in the States this winter, so I can always read more about it then. As for what I mean about how's and why's, I'm a researcher and I guess I just want to learn more about it.

 

You guys are giving me some good ideas of where to start. Thanks!

[Dmmetler]

I used ASL with my DD from birth on (ASL is my strongest other language), and I've taught Signing Smart classes. If you're going to get a book, the Signing Smart one isn't a bad one to start with, because it breaks down the strategies. I don't agree with them 100%, though.

 

Just as there's baby talk, there are baby signs. Very young children will simplify the handshapes and movements naturally. It doesn't mean you need to do so, any more than you need to simplify your speech and leave out the sounds a young child cannot yet say. I do suggest viewing a video or two that shows what signs look like when young children do them (The Baby Signing Time ones are good for this) so you know what you're looking for. It is very, very easy to miss a young child's signs.

 

One thing I would like to add-remember what motivates you is not what motivates your child. While food is highly motivating for a young child, they've got other ways of showing they need food. Same with diaper signs (I've had SO many parents get frustrated because their 9-12 month old simply didn't sign that they needed a diaper change. They forgot that THEY were more motivated to learn that sign than their child was). What often worked well as a first sign was something the CHILD loved-but didn't have an obvious way of showing. BOOK or BUBBLES often were first signs. MORE for swinging or bouncing is likely to get a response sooner than MORE for cheerios-no matter how much a child loves cheerios.

 

The other thing is that it's like speech. It can take months to get that first sign-but once you do, it's like a floodgate opens. So don't wait to see a response on sign one before adding the rest-if you give your child exposure to a lot of signs before they start to sign, what you'll see is a spurt of signing when they do "get it". When I did 6 week Signing classes, a lot of parents would be dejected because their child hadn't signed yet-but I'd run into them 6 months later, and they'd be excited because a month or two after the class ended, their child started signing up a storm. This is where I part ways with Signing Smart, who states that you should focus on a few signs. I admit, for parents who don't sign, that's easier, but it's not the way young children acquire language.

 

Expect a fall-off on using ASL when a child can speak-but you'll find if you do keep using it that they'll retain it when they need it. I find it especially helpful in church ;).

 

One thing I did, which was helpful to DH was to use the ASL Clip and Create software and caption the house with sign/word cards to remind him what signs were good to use in that given location. I also used the software to put signs in many of DD's picture books. I suspect you could do the same thing with signs from online without having the software library.

[Dana]

We used the Signing Time videos with our son (the library carried them, then we got our own set). One of the neatest things for me was when my son signed "more" when I was tickling him and stopped. It really stands out for me as the first time he used language in a new way (we'd only used it with food before).

[mommaduck]

We sign with them as soon as they can sit up. We didn't sign with my oldest, but started after my second child was a toddler that seemed to have delayed speech. We taught her to sign and the words started flowing with the sign language...she would sign and it slowed her down enough to make connections and finally get the words out of her mouth.

[Mimm]

We taught our first to sign a little bit. I guess we weren't terribly motivated about it. I loved the idea of giving a child tools to communicate before they could actually say words. But in practice, it didn't really reduce her frustration. I think we should have given her more time to "get it". It didn't help that my father was around a lot, and he thought the whole concept was moronic, so I felt silly doing it. I can't find the book we used. I think it was called Baby Signs, but the Baby Signs on Amazon has a different cover (a new edition, I think) so I'm not entirely sure.

[cougarmom4]

We used sign with dd2; started when she was about 8-9 months. "Signing Time" is amazing. I seriously could not believe how quickly she learned the signs and began using them (and my older kids, too!). The most helpful signs were "more," "all done," and "milk". She was able to communicate with us very early and it was wonderful.

 

You can check out the "Signing Time" website for some info on signing with little ones. http://www.signingtime.com/faqs/benefits-of-signing/

Their DVD's are great, but it is so expensive...luckily we had them showing on our local pbs station for awhile and I recorded them. Baby Signing Time #1 and Signing Time #1 are the ones I'd recommend most.

[fhjmom]

We love Signing Times!

 

A few cautions from a family that uses ASL as a second language for communiation. Please, please, please do not make up your own signs. If you are going to teach your child another language, why not go ahead and teach them something that will be useful outside of your family? If you were going to teach Spanish, would you intersperse your own made-up Spanish-sounding words in the mix? Also, I have seen instances where a person would make-up a sign and the one they picked actually had a meaning, but much different than what they were using it for (and sometimes it was quite embarrassing as it was an "inappropriate" sign, IYKWIM).

 

As far as "simplifying", young children will babble and simplify the language themselves. Just as in spoken language, adults are encouraged to model good language, the same is true in sign. Take the signs your DC gives and respond, encourage, etc., but when you sign back, model the sign correctly. One example from our family, my littlest cannot get both the second and third finger to bend when signing "I Love you" (or airplane, same handshape); she only bends the second finger. We know she is saying "I love you" (or airplane) and we still sign back to her the correct handshape. I know eventually her motor skills will catch up and she will already know the correct way to make the sign. Also, as someone else said, sign the important concept fo the sentence. You do not have to sign every word. True ASL is conceptual and does not follow English word order. It has its own grammar and syntax that is very different from spoken English.

 

Also, I would be careful in the resources you choose to learn from as some that are strictly "baby signs" are made up and not based on ASL. Also, be aware that "signed English" is not the same as ASL although they share many of the same signs. I throw that out there because I have seen some books from Garlic Press at homeschool conventions and many of them are Signed English (SEE) instead of ASL. We do use some of their resources, but I teach my girls both the ASL sign and the SEE sign when they differ (and tell them which is which). It may not matter to you which signs you use, I just wanted to let you know there was a difference so if you were looking at two dfiferent resources that had different signs listed, you would know why.

 

Last, I wanted to encourage you and say thanks! Someday, I and my girls may really depend on ASL for communication since our hearing losses are progressive. It is beautiful language and the more children that have exposure to it early, the more they may choose to go ahead and learn more about it later. I have many Deaf friends and to be able to communicate in their langauge is priceless (although I am still not very good at it, I try). The more hearing people that learn ASL, the more access my family and friends have to the world! :) My girls learn so much faster than I do, I wish i had the opportunity to learn ASL as a child!

[gracesteacher]

my family has used signing time and we know and use all of the words what would be our next step

[grace'smom]

We loved the Signing Time videos and taught our child to sign using the videos. In reality, my husband and I learned the signs from the videos and then taught them to Grace, because she wasn't really into TV at the time. But those videos were so much more entertaining and easy to learn from than the boring adult videos, LOL.

 

I strongly encourage you to teach signing. Our daughter has auditory processing delays and we never realized anything was wrong until we pushed the spoken language and stopped signing to her. Her verbal speech was delayed but we were certain that she was just attached to sign language so we started to speak verbal words only to her. Only then did we realize there was an issue. However, to this day I wonder how her intelligence, social skills and processing would have been changed if she did not have that visual window for communication. It hurts my heart to think that she could have been unable to understand us at all for so long if we hadn't taught sign. How lonely that could have been for her. But she was able to understand our signs even though our words were too fast and jumbly for her. To this day I am so, so grateful that I taught her sign language.

 

You never know what benefits might come from teaching a skill. If you can do it, why not? You could be so thankful later that you did.

[Terabith]

We started signing with my six year old at birth, but we were fairly limited in the signs we knew: milk, more, eat, drink. Were a few more, but I don't remember. Around 15 months, she was diagnosed with a speech delay, and we started signing in earnest. We used Signing Time (over and over and over), and by her second birthday she had 250 signs and we could have conversations in sign. I used to wonder what other patrons at restaurants thought. Usually I was speaking (and signing for emphsis) and she was replying via sign, and then I responded..... It was great. A little after two her oral motor skills were much improved and she started speaking. She went from six months behind to above average in less than a month! Her speech therapist had never seen anything like it. The sign had given her a language base, even if not spoken, that transferred seamlessly to spoken English.

 

I used it with my now 5 year old, but she spoke ridiculously early and didn't care for sign. She used some signs, but not many.

[Aubrey]

I tried to teach ds #1 when he was 3mos. It didn't work, so I gave up, figuring the whole idea was silly. I mean, the book *said* babies would learn signs at...I don't remember, 9-12mos, maybe? I figured by then, he'd be talking anyway, so what was the point?

 

At some point later on, though, the teachers at ds's daycare taught him signs for more, eat, drink. Oh my gosh, it was amazing! We could get him to stop crying in restaurants by telling him to use his words, & people would come up to us & ask how old he was. The conversations were great, people were amazed, & my 9-18mo old baby behaved much better, given language to express his needs.

 

There was a period of overlap, where he'd rub his belly frantically, & say, "eash, eash!" I don't know if we would have figured out that that meant please w/out the signs. And he was talking very early, but the signs were still a life-saver.

 

We've taught a few basic signs to the rest of our dc w/ the same success, & now the bigs occasionally use them to ask me something "privately" w/out the rest of the room hearing. I can sign "thank you" to them behind someone's back when they've forgotten to say it.

 

Baby signs are awesome!

[CalicoKat]

Has anyone here taught thier baby to sign? If so, when did you start teaching them signs? What signs did you teach first? Can you recommend a book for me to read to learn more about signing? I would like to try this with my ds as he gets older, so any advice/help you can offer would be greatly appreciated :)!

We started as soon as we introduced solid foods.

 

It works best when you sign eat, and then hand them a cheerio, for each cheerio. :D

 

And again "All done!" at the end of each meal.

 

We also do teach them the signs for please, thank you, more, potty (handy for training), shoes on, sit down, and if you have pets animal names.

 

It helps so much to be able to truly communicate with signs. We've done this for all 5 of our children and indeed we were ahead when it came to our last child that specialists told us to never expect her to talk out loud. We went to therapy for her to learn more advanced signs and the therapists were astonished that she already knew the basics. They encouraged vocalization with the sign and now she speaks so well.

 

That first sign from your child is like wow!

[Food4Thought]

I taught sign to both of mine, starting when they were old enough to see me. DS didn't say a word until he was nearly 2, but he knew 30+ signs at that time, so we never had the tantrums from communication issues. I was SO glad we did that.

 

DD started talking and signing at around the same time, at about 10 months. She didn't need to depend on sign quite as much as DS, but it still eased our communication quite a bit. She still uses sign sometimes, and signs with the babies in our church nursery (my MIL teaches them sign in there, after our great experiences with sign language).

 

I think I read Baby Signs, but it's been so long now that I'm not sure. I used the ASL sites to find and practice the signs, and just added them as I was comfortable. The most popular here were: more, eat, please, wash (bath), milk, juice (drink), and all done. We still use the one-handed version of "I love you" as a family.

[lailasmum]

I taught my dd basic BSL from a very young age, maybe 4 months. She never signed back to me but was a very early talker and learnt the words we were trying to teach her to sign instead. I think that she gained a huge amount from her exposure to signing even though she never used it, it seemed to open the floodgates of communication.

 

I am trying to find a BSL course now to do some more.

[Rosie_0801]

Offer the thing you're trying to teach, say the word and perform the sign. So, I would say, "Do you want more crackers?" and I would make the sign for "more". Or I would say, "Do you want to read a book?" and make the sign for "book".

 

In my experience that is useful only to a point, then it becomes harmful. They are two separate languages, and should be treated as such. The above strategy taught my dd signs, but it hampered her production because she wouldn't sign something she couldn't also pronounce. When I stopped signing, she realised the speech and sign could stand alone, and suddenly she was using all the signs I knew she understood. It might be different with different kids, though, from reading the other posts here. When you start moving into sentences, you need to separate them because you can't use two grammar structures at the same time.

 

Oh, the reason I taught "work" very early on was a training issue, so she'd accept that work was an inevitable part of life. "Daddy is going to work" has rarely been cause for upset because work is a thing Daddy does. As she's grown, it has become a word that means no one should interrupt and no you can't go too :) If she is concentrating on something terribly important (like rearranging the cutlery, lol) she'll say "work" very firmly, and expect to be left alone to do it.

 

Rosie

[kalanamak]

I taught my dd basic BSL from a very young age, maybe 4 months.

 

I'll never forget the joy I felt when fussy child signed for a bottle (he'd just had one but wanted two) when I asked him "What do you want?" OTOH, he loved signing the animals, and indeed, his first three spoken words were three of his favorite signed words: cat, dog and elephant. So, I encourage useful words, and the names of things s/he loves. Thinking about it now, kiddo's only non-utilitarian verb was dance, and it was the first verb he spoke, too.

[duckens]

You've gotten some great signing references and advice here. I just wanted to add dd3.5's story as food for thought for you.

 

I started signing with dd as soon as she was born. I knew that most babies didn't do their first sign until 8-10months at the earliest, but I was excited.

 

I was also lucky because our local library had a "Babytalk" program that taught babysigns (a few a week) in addition to teaching interactive songs for baby and encouraging baby/parent interaction.

 

Here is a record of dd's signs:

 

8months: Nothing

9months: Nothing

10months: Nothing

11months: Nothing

12months: Nothing, but I knew that if she wasn't taking in my interactions with her, I was just being stupid.

13months: Nothing

14months: She did "bunny" when my brother's family brought her a stuffed bunny for and Easter visit!!!

 

The following week, she added new signs nearly every day, including ones that I hadn't done in over a month! Eventually she had over 80signs, and could tell stories because she had enough signs.

 

Of course, her verbal skills were delayed then.....:glare:

 

What I learned:

Dd is still taking things in even if it doesn't seem obvious to me in the moment of teaching. I just need to keep at it and be patient if I homeschool her.

 

Also, her verbal skills caught up by her third birthday, and she was reading full sentences by then, too....so she's going to be okay.

[Desert Rat]

The only signs we used regularly were "food", "more", and "finished". But they were extremely helpful until the kids were old enough to talk.

HTH

[CactusPair]

I'm just learning about baby sign language, as I didn't use it w/ my older dc.

 

I just got out the first Signing Time DVD, and so far like it a lot. Very clear directions and easy to follow. The baby likes the music, too.

 

My older dc and I have already learned several signs and practiced today w/ Little Miss Baby.

 

She knew something was up and seemed fascinated.

 

I've been reading about how signing can help pre-verbal LO's w/ Down Syndrome communicate very effectively.

 

It's really awesome.

 

I thought it would be cool to try w/ our amost one yr. old to help cut down on toddler tantrums.

 

I need to learn more about mixing verbal language and signs, but that will come later.

[Pata]

Thank you guys for all this great information! I guess that we'll try teaching him a few, but not expect to see any results for a long time, since he's still young. I'll probably read up on it and see if they library has any signing time videos when we get back to this States this winter. Thanks again!

[Laurie4b]

My ds talked a little late and he made up a whole bunch of his own signs. He would string them together into sentences. I don't think it matters if you use standard signs unless other people who don't know him need to interact with them. But learning the standard ones may be easier than making stuff up on your own. Most of them have some connection with the thing/concept they stand for.

[Rosie_0801]

I need to learn more about mixing verbal language and signs, but that will come later.

 

Speak-singing is a very natural way for hearing or hard of hearing signing people to communicate, but it means you are signing along to English grammar, but not even doing that properly, because ASL doesn't have translations of quite a few of those essential words, like articles and whatnot. So, basically it is doing both languages badly.

 

If you are only learning to mooch about the house with, that's fine. If you want it to count for credit in high school, don't do it. Imagine what English would be like if you lopped off all prefixes, suffixes, tones and most of the adjectives. That's kind of what speak-signing does to ASL.

 

 

Over here, Makaton is used with Down's kiddies. I don't know if it is the same in the US, but it is basically key word signing. No sign language grammar or any other sign language specific linguistic features. As far as I know, it is based on Signed English, which was based on the native sign language in the way sausages are based on animal. (Bits taken out, other bits put in, and repackaged.)

 

Rosie

Edited July 20, 2010 by Rosie_0801