If you look at my web addy you’ll notice that it says LilSigner. Well I got this domain name ages ago thinking I’ll be using it to post info on baby sign language. We did this with our first, M, and it was great. At around 6-months M could sign milk and by 14-months she knew 30+ signs. That girl rarely cried because we didn’t understand her.
But, life took over and the domain name stayed dormant.
Years later there are tons of sites with baby signing info. But I still kept the name because I like it and like M we started signing with Jovie when she was 4-months old.
Is she signing yet? I think so but it’s still vague. I see her raise her hand and somewhat make the milk sign but not so sure. I know that she knows the word milk. She gets very excited!
Unlike M, Jovie’s physical development is a tad bit slower. M was on her tummy at 4-months old. Jovie just got comfortable doing it at around 5.5-months. Jovie is still trying to sit up on her own and M at this age was already a sitting pro. Every baby’s different and so we’ll just see what happens.
Some babies don’t have full control of their movement until they’re 8-months old so we’ll wait. But, while we wait, we’ll continue to sign milk and lately I’ve added mom and eat too (don’t overwhelm, pick 2-3 most used words with milk being one of the first).
After she signs her first word we’re going to start watching some videos. Our favorite is My Baby Can Talk. I think this video is a perfect first video for babies. It’s slow and the images entrance these little people. After she knows a few more and a bit older we’ll move up to Signing Time. Signing Time has more songs and dance. The graphic is fun too but a lot faster pace.
Which videos do we have? We have the first and second My Baby Can Talk videos and Signing Time Vol. 3 and Vol. 5 ABC.
As you can see we didn’t invest in a lot. M learned lots of words from the above DVDs and from me showing her words that were not in the DVDs. My Baby Can Talk has a nice video dictionary of words and Michigan State University has a nice video catalog. I also noticed that there’s a new one when I was Googling for the MSU site and it seems quite nice too, ASL Pro.
If you do research on sign language you might notice that there are two different types. One is American Sign Language or ASL and the other is Signing Exact English or SEE. I took SEE and although a lot of words uses the same signs there are differences. Most if not all of the baby signing instructions uses ASL.
When your baby starts signing you’ll notice that she will not sign perfectly. This is ok. Babies don’t start to talk in perfect English either. You’ll also notice that she will start coming up with her own signs. This is ok too. Just go with the flow! The point of baby signing for hearing children is to be able to communicate before the child can speak. Even after the child starts speaking it’s not a bad idea to keep signing up. One day M wanted a banana and I could not understand what she said. On the third try she looked at me crossly, said the word again AND signed. I said, “Aaaaah, banana” and I gave her one. Another reason to keep signing is that when in public it was so much nicer for M to sign “poop” than say it out loud {::SMILE}.
Before I leave I want to share one more thing. We think Jovie has already said her first word: mom. She only uses it when I’m not around and she’s upset and wanting me. She’s been doing this the last few days. A bit early, no?
