Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Teaching your baby to sign

Here is some interesting information about teaching your baby/ toddler to sign. I think it's a great idea. It is much easier than you might think. Many of the signs that you would want to teach a preverbal child are very natural. For example the ASL sign for "you" is to simply point at the person you are talking about. To say "I" or "ME" you point at yourself. You just have to be faithful about useing the sign everytime you use the word. You do not need to spend any money on books or videos. A vocabulary of 25 or so signs is enough to avoid a lot of frustration when your child does not have the verbal skills to communicate. Communicating with your child this way (signing and speaking) often results in the baby begining to sign at 6 to 8 months. Sign language uses both the right and left sides of the brain so while some people are naturally stronger on left brain subjects and some the right. Sign language seems to be easier for either. You can make a list of signs that would seem helpful and find them online. I will hopefully soon post many here. Some suggestions would be:

{I, Me} Blanket,
You, Bed,
Mine, Get,
Yours, Come,
Want, Go,
Need, Please,
Eat, Mommy,
Drink, Daddy,
Sleep, Happy,
Toy, Sad,
More, Mad
Hurt,
Yes, No, You get the Idea.













1 comment:

Tom said...

Let me second that!
We taught my oldest daughter some signs as an infant (hungry, more, etc) and as she grew up we've added some words.

Now with a new baby, we're starting again.