ADVICE RATING |
 4.92 (Highly recommend) from 13 votes (170 Visits) |
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A lesson in sign language |
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by lilysmom  (January 2009) (rank 71st) |
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Baby sign is very popular right now. It's said that baby's who sign learn languages better, because they start communicating at a younger age.
For me, I learned it to cut down on frustration. My daughter was pretty much deaf because of ear infections up until she was almost
2. The poor thing was very ready to communicate, and was very frustrated that she couldn't get her point across. She started using her first sign, the sign for milk at around 6 months old, and by the time she was 10 months she knew around 30 signs.
The easiest way to teach a baby a sign is to say it and do the action at the same time. For example, you could hold the bottle of milk (or settle down to nurse) and say milk and make the sign. Then while they are drinking up, make the sign a couple more times while saying the word. It shouldn't take long before your child recognizes the sign, and starts getting all excited when you sign milk because they know its feeding time! And not long after they should start doing the sign when they want to feed.
For the more difficult signs, you can help mould your childs hand to the sign. They probably lack the muscle coordination to get their little fingers into the shapes.
Don't be discouraged if your child does a sign "wrong". The sign for more is done by bunching up your fingers and tapping them together, but most children will start doing this sign by tapping their fingers on their wrist. Eventually they will get the movement down pat!
Sign for me was a lifesaver! It cut down on so much guess work and frustration for both me and my daughter!
