Who is using baby sign language?

[kiwimum]

Who else is out the using baby sign language with their toddlers?
My daughter is 13 months old and only just recently her communication through signing has really started to shine. I think she knows how to use about 20 signs and is starting to use two signs together when trying to communicate. 
Just the other day I was reading her a book on the plane trying to entertian her and settle her, she was enjoying the book but then all of a sudden she signed "finished" and then "sleep" I put the book away and to my surprise she fell asleep in my arms straight away. Up until this point I think she had only signed one sign at a time so i was very impressed with her. I know if she wasn't able to sign and comunicate like that to me then I proberly would have tried to read her another book or feed her or something else that would have just made her cranky.
She loves to tell me that the "dog" is "sleeping" and that the "birds" are "eating" outside using her signs.

For those who don't know baby sign language is not just for hearing impaired babies, it's for anyone. You sign and say the word at the same time so the child is exposed to both.

I don't know anyone else who has or is signing with their hearing toddler. I'd love to hear others stories... So please feel free to add you stories.

What sign have people found useful and quick to learn?

[Li21]

Hi
I sign with both my sons. My two year old has DOwn syndrome, which was the reason to start, however my ten month old is signing too now. The best way to help them to sign is by signing nursery rhymes, both my kids first sign was spider due to the nursery rhymes.  I always sign the flash card I show and I sign whilst reading books with them.

[nellie]

Hi,
I get to know about signing baby when I first watched the movie "Meet the Fockers". At that time I wasn't married nor I have a baby yet but it really motivated me to teach my future baby to sign which I did with my girl. I saw one time on Oprah this 'gifted' woman 'understands' baby language by their cooing sound, I got worried a bit because how on earth I could learn that! Then, "Meet the Fockers" saved my day  The signing did help me (and my baby) a lot. Although, people at the supermarket might think I'm crazy, guess who's smiling now  She picks up 'milk' at 4mo or earlier and then I never take my eyes off her in case she is saying something. I flash cards and do the sign with her. If no cards, I flash the things or point and then do the sign. With spoken words. When my girl talk non stop my husband asked me if we could teach her the signing again. 

[Kerileanne99]

Aaarrgghhh!
I just wrote a more detailed post that I somehow managed to delete

So, short version!

Using Sign Language with babies, toddlers, children of all ages, has absolutely countless benefits! We use it with our toddler, as do many, many people on this forum...if you search for Sign Language in the forum search function there are loads of threads outlining experiences and benefits!

Dr. Jones recently suggested that signing may well help to stimulate the cerebral cortex through cotical opposition!

Also, if you haven't discovered Baby Signing Time and Signing Time, head there FIRST! What a treat. Exceptional videos, books, and resources for teaching ASL to kids (of all ages )

One note of caution: I would highly recommend that you make sure you are teaching ASL (or your countries version!) rather than the more haphazard 'baby sign language' ....some books tend to use the terms loosely, to say the least!
http://www.signingtime.com/index.php/?gclid=CJajrorDybACFaVdTAodRUpZWQ

[Kerileanne99]

Forgot to mention that if you don't want to buy the Signing Time DVDs, most public libraries stock a good selection of them, and they are even shown (in the US) on PBS in many areas...

[Korrale4kq]

I started teaching James to sign from a few months of age. The only sign he picked up as a baby was a sign we created to nurse.
At abut 18 months of age, he was still non verbal, no eye contact, not pointing, not acknowledging pictures, and certainly not saying mama. 
I lifted my no tv ban and started to show him the baby signing time DVDs. Within a month he knew all the signs. Then we just kept going and with a few more months he knew hundreds of signs. At about 20 months he was expressing lots of things to me. Last fall he signed to me... *trees, cold, leaves, fall down*
All the things that I had been talking to him about were finally being expressed!
He started showing me he could read words by using the signs for them. Then eventually he started reading the words verbally. It took him about a year of speech therapy to get him to start talking, without the aid of written words and during that time he talked in a rapid hybrid signing babble, early speech way.

At 30 months James' speech is catching up but he still signs words when he gets frustrated. Sadly a lot of the words that he used to know are being forgotten.

[Eliana]

I ordered our first Baby Signing Time videos when Ellie was about 6 months old.  She was a typical baby other than being super colicky for the first four months. We bought a few videos every couple of months until we owned the complete set of Baby Signing Time and Signing Time Series 1 & 2.  (I just found them at my local library. Wish I had checked earlier!)  Ellie had constant ear infections from 9 months until she had tubes put in at 14 months.  I am glad we had ASL, as I'm not sure she heard a lot with fluid in her ears constantly.  My husband thought I was crazy to teach her ASL as a baby, but once she started signing back, he was sold.

Ellie started signing back at 9 months and had a huge signing vocabulary by 14 months.  By 18 months, she started to recognize written words that she knew signs for, and started "reading" them.  I got YBCR at 24 months because she seemed to know so many words already, and she read (and/or signed) all of the flashcards in the set within the first couple of viewings of the YBCR videos.  Now we are using LR, and we sign the words as they are flashed.  She constantly amazes me with how many words she can read without assistance.  The LR Deluxe set just came in the mail and she read eight of the Very Easy books on her own, the first time we looked at them.  She is talking and signing well at 2.5, and she still loves watching Signing Time, along with the Scholastic Goodnight Moon ASL series, and other nursery rhymes and stories in ASL that I can find on Youtube.  I would definitely recommend the Signing Time series to new moms and dads!

[knstrick]

I'm trying to figure out a way to incorporate sign language with my LR. I've been trying to sign the word in the multisensory part of the lesson (the word and picture flash phase of the lesson is too fast for me), but my baby's attention span reaches its max before the end of the multisensory phase. She also has shown little interest in the signing time videos so far, but I'm going to keep trying.

[Eliana]

knstrick,

I try to look at the words in the lesson before it even starts in the "lesson content" screen.  I can see which signs I know, and have them fresh on my mind before the word flash.  I am pretty good at getting most of the signs in here, but I've been signing for 2 years.  I wouldn't have been able to keep up when I first started. 

You could look at adjusting the autoforward settings to try to slow them down, or just sign during the multisensory part.  You can also "customize your lessons" and turn the video off for the multisensory part if it is too much for your little one.  If I could "improve" LR, it would add a video of an adult or child signing the word during the multisensory part.  But, I know that teaching signing isn't the focus of LR.

When Ellie first started at 6 mo, she liked the ST videos but didn't always look at me directly when I signed to her.  I wondered how much she was really picking up and if my efforts were just being wasted.  But, I tried to be consistent, and I she did just fine over time.

[Li21]

I use the iPad, in the multisensory section after the word comes up, I sign and repeat the word then I  scroll to the image page and once that has finished i then then sign again and repeat the word and then scroll and so forth. I sit behind the iPad so I can see that my son is focusing on the words and images. He now signs after seeing the words and images. Another cute tip, is to do the animal noises as you sign.

[kiwimum]

Thanks everyone for adding your stories, I really enjoyed reading them and I hope there are more stories to come.
I am using LR to help my daughter to learn sign language, I have taken personal photo of myself doing the signs, added the words and sounds and made a list we can go through twice a week or more. I'm not using ASL cos New Zealand has our own version, it's very much the same just slightly different.
Those starting out with young babies I think making it more personal with photos or videos of family members do the signs may help with their interest. It's a bit of work but worth it.

Next I'm going to try and create something on LR where I add nursery rhymes with music and photos/video with signing. I think my daughter would enjoy that.

My daughter has just learnt the sign "where/what" I used it all the time with her to try and find her lost toys. Today she signed it back with another sign "where" is "Tui" (our pet dogs name). I love it, at 13 months she has the tools to ask questions, that's amazing I think?

[AaronJohnson]

Teaching kids sign language is a great way to boost their vocabulary!  There have been tons of studies showing that learning a second language when growing up can boost a child's intelligence and help them learn as they grow older.  I don't have any children of my own yet, but I do know that the first signs I learned from a friend were awkward and turtle, which came into a surprising amount of use in our conversations.

I wonder if there are any baby signing classes in New Zealand you could take your child to.  I know here in California there are SignShine classes not too far from where I live, but I don't know what options you may have near you.  Classes like that would be great for helping you and your child sign together 

[lois1]

I'm using BSL & just teaching my little boy what I learnt myself. We don't have much screen time & I prefer to keep it that way so have avoided the videos etc. I only discovered it/ realised it could be used for babies when he was around a year old & he's now 20 mths. I would learn a few signs the night before, that were appropriate for us, & repeat them regularly during the day. Once I was sure I had them correctly, then I would learn some more. He picked them up very quickly.

It's fantastic. I did the sign for biscuit for ages but he would never use it, I didn't know whether he didn't know it, if it was too awkward for him to do or whatever. He would always just sign "eat".. yesterday I was making him a snack which he wasn't keen on, he signed very definitely that he wanted a "biscuit". I am so proud of him (as every parent tends to be ) but it was so nice to see him express his opinion, no tantrums, just very politely telling me that the snack wasn't to his liking. And of course when he follows it with "peese" he pretty much knows I'll give him anything, ha ha. I love knowing what he's thinking about.

He might point to something far away & I'll have no clue what he's indicating.. then he'll sign & I'll get it that he saw a bird in the tree. He has dropped some of the signs now that he's more verbal, but I still use it as much as I can. I think it's especially helpful when speaking in another language, I would rather sign that repeat the phrase in English to help him understand. It's also helped with potty training although we are passing through a "no potty" period at the minute he's way too busy for all that nonsense .

A really good tip I found on here was to help the baby manipulate their fingers to make the sign as some of them are a bit difficult. That helped us enormously.

[Humbler9]

I've been teaching my twins sign language since they were 6 months old.  I feel that was a bit later than I should have started, but it has worked out well.  This is their 3rd language.
We purchased 'Signing Times' (Season 1 and 2).  We spent six months or so just on season 1.  Every night when they would be drinking milk in their bouncy chairs, we'd play one disc.  Then next day, we'd play the next numbered disc (1-2-3-4-5-etc...).  At 12 months, just as I was beginning to get discourage, they began using a slew of signs.  Now they are almost 17 months, and their signing vocabulary has greatly increased.

What we've been doing--  I downloaded flashcards of different subjects in the download section here at Brillkids.  Fruits, animals (farm, wild, and everyday animals), transportation, etc...
As I'm flashing the cards to them, I'll also do the sign.  I have found that it works wonders for their vocabulary.

Just the other day, my wife and I were picking up our boys from daycare (2x/week).  When our twins heard and saw us, they started coming towards us, but one of them stopped.  We noticed that he was signing "Hello" to us.  It was the cutest thing seeing him stop, then his hands were waving.  I could tell that he was so excited to be telling us hello in ASL.  If I were to guess, I would say my twins understand close to 80 words now. ( ie: water, bread, toast, milk, cookie, cracker, more, salt and pepper (they love when I pepper my food with the pepper mill), many colors, many animals, body parts, vehicles, grass, sit, stand, lay, drink, eat, good morning, good night, no, yes, egg, cup, look, listen, toilet, pain, etc...)

Anyways, perhaps the flashcard idea might interest some of you.  I also sign objects from the books that I read them.

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