Opinions About Signing with Hearing Baby

I've only heard good results about signing as communication with babies, before they can speak, and I was sorry I didn't learn about this earlier, when my daughter was a baby (she's 12 now). Maybe the child who was delayed in speaking would have been so even if he never signed?

I agree with all the responses here so far. I started teaching my son to sign at around 7 months old. He started to really pick up the signs around 9 months old. He is now 16 months old, and signs regularly for things that he wants or things he likes. He especially loves to sign the names of animals and then say their sounds. He has a very strong verbal vocabulary as well, and typically signs the word while he's saying it. Since, at his age it is sometimes hard to distinguish his words, this really helps. I can easily tell the difference between ball, bath or book since he signs while he speaks. We used a DVD and CD set called "Baby Signing Time" (which actually does teach American Sign Language)and my son LOVES to sing and sign along. I highly recommend signing, and agree that you should not use signing instead of speaking, rather in conjunction with speaking. I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

Hey M.,
I am a speech therapist and have been to conferences about baby sign, in addition to reading a LOT of research on the subject. Studies have found that signing with your baby actually promotes language development and does not delay speech. It is quite possible that your friend's son was going to be a late talker anyway, and at least the sign gave him some form of communication! Like everyone else said - you have to speak the words that you are signing so your baby lears to speak them too.
I also have used sign with my daughter and would totally recommend it!!

Hi - I think it really depends on the child. My son is 6 1/2 months and he is already very verbel. In addition to the signs he is trying to figure out he pushs the sound out with every attempt. My mother started him on the sign lang. 1 month ago and I would highly reccomend it. Never stop using your words with the signs and both should fall into place. Good luck

Hey M., I'm so glad you are thinking of trying this. I did this w/my 2 daughters and think it is the most wonderful thing for Mama and baby. If you teach them some words in sign, they can communicate w/you & know the joys of communicating so early in life. It is good for their brain development. It is good for the two of you and will bring you closer. My daughters made up new signs of their own and we all used them, the fun and intimacy of your own language is so beautiful. I still use some of the signs w/my 5yr old. When we are out and my daughter forgets to use her manners w/an adult, I can discreetly sign "please" and she remembers right away w/out the embarrassment of being corrected in front of ohters.
I've never heard of anyone experiencing a delay due to the sign language so your friend may be the exception. I've recommended teaching sign language to friends who have children w/speech delays and it has actually helped them express themselves and eliminate some frustrations and they learned to talk shortly after.
Good luck w/your decision and your baby! S.

My best friend and my sister in law both did sign language with their children. They both did really well with it and their mom's were able to understand what they wanted before they could talk. Also they both started talking at about a year, which is right on time.

i signed with my now 2 year old daughter from the time she was 1 yo until she could talk... she just dropped the signs as we understood her better.

i swear by it! i think it was a wonderful tool in helping us to understand her little mind and what she was thinking. i also do believe that it helped to prevent a number of potential tantrums because we knew what she wanted and communicate with her about it.

i highly recommend the videos "my baby can talk"... there are 2 of them.

edited to say that i always said the word with the sign... and that is how any book will tell you to do it. say the word with the sign.

also, my daughter's favorites were "dog" and "cat".... she would sign dog all the time even if there wasn't a dog around. i thought it was cute... as if she was telling us she was thinking about a dog.

also, once she learned the sign for "all done"...she would sign it when she no longer wanted to be in her carseat or in the grocery cart. i thought that was super cute because she was able to tell us she didn't want to be in there anymore, then i could empathize and understand but then explain that she had to stay in... it seemed to help.

good luck!

Hi-
I started signing with my 2 and 1/2 year old son at around 6 months. It was great, he told me what he needed and i asked him questions. He started speaking at 9 months and by 15 months could count to ten and say about 25 other words. He has so many words people always think he is older than he is. He is now 2 1/2 and speaking in full sentences, not three word sentences but more like 7 or 8 word sentences. I have a 4 month old daughter now and plan to teach her a few signs as well especially since we will be starting food soon.
Hope this helps.
-J.

i highly recommend it! we used it with speaking and my son picked it up around 12 months and still at 2 uses signs and has made up his own signs. I think it delayed his speaking a bit b/c he wasn't as motivated b/c he could sign however he just turned 2 last month and is quickly catching up with his speech good luck!!

I sign with my 21 month old, and have been since he was 9 months. He is not delayed in his speech, and says any word he hears now and can communicate verbally. The sign was great, because he was able to communicate before he was verbally able to. Once he was able to say the word, he started saying it and signing at the same time. He likes the fact that he can say what he's signing, and he really gets a kick out of it now. I praise him everytime he's able to say what he's signing, so he really enjoys it. I didn't show him too many things in signs, just the essentials like milk, please... but I have a couple of baby Einstein dvd's that have sign, and he's picked up on most of them.

I started signing with my daughter when she was about 8 months old and within a week or two she was signing a few words. It made life much easier because I could better understand what she wanted. She also really enjoyed communicating and learning new signs. She started speaking at about 1 year. She is 2 years old now and still loves to sign even though she is also very verbal.
I highly recommend signing with babies and I will start at an even younger age if I have another child.
I used the book 'Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers'. It is ok, but there may be better books out there. Aslpro has a website with a video dictionary that I found very helpful. http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi
I would simplify some of the more complicated signs sometimes so that my daughter could do them more easily.
good luck.- B.

Hi M.,

I have done sign with my now 22 month old since she was 6 months old. It has been absolutely wonderful. My daughter is higher verbal and has been since an early age, but I think the sign has definitely decreased early frustration with language development. There are two different types of sign you can do ASL ( American sign language) or baby sign. I recommend doing ASL because she can use this in real life. I am still teaching my daughter new signs every day. She loves showing people and communicating her new signs. There are some great websites that show different ASL signs so you can teach her/him correctly. If your interested I can email you them. The only difficulty I had was that I worked part time and I had to teach her caregivers (grandparents) the signs too. They loved knowing what she wanted or what was bothering her. It just took them a bit to understand exactly what she was saying. Riley never had a problem with delayed speech because she was signing, and I don't know anyone that has had that problem. Just make sure when your doing the sign that you correspond it with a direct verbal identification of the sign. And when they are ready they will pair the word with the sign too, and then eventually just say the word. I am encouraging Riley to still communicate with her signs and sometimes I give her directions only in sign because it is something I want her to be able to use in the future as she gets bigger. I also think it will be great w\for when we decide to have number 2 that the big sister will be able to understand and communicate with her sibling. I hope this has helped.

O.K. M. this is what happened with my son. Who is now 5 yrs old. Signing is great to help with ommuncation. But can make a baby lazy. Usually with boys. What i did was sign and say the words.
Alot of people are going to give u advice on this subject. My son was speeh delayed and the signing really helped alot

N.

Hi M.! Hope you are feeling well. I am an elementary school teacher turned SAHM and I used sign with both my kids and my students! It gives you a much earlier way to know that your baby is understanding you because they start to use the hand gestures much sooner than they are able to talk. I would definately advocate FOR using it. Good luck!

Check out www.toysofdiscovery.com
Click SHOP and search for "Baby Signs". It's a two-book set with a DVD showing kids making the signs for the words shown in the books.

Agree with Kathy S 100%, my daughter is 8 mo old and she is signing milk, and happy. Not talking yet but babbling a lot. She has been saying mama and dada for a while but she still doesn't know what it means. Even i fyou sign to your baby always, always talk to her/him and read to him/her this is as important for language development.

Congratulations on your pregnancy and good luck with everything.

O.

hi M.,

congratulations on your pregnancy! i started signing with my hearing baby boy when he was 5 months old. some statistics for you: he signed his first word at 7 months ("milk"), said his first word at 9 months ("hot"), signed his first sentence at 17 months ("i hear a bird singing") and is now 21 months and talking quite a bit in 2 languages. still no spoken sentences other than "i want this/ that". he may or may not be speaking in full articulate sentences at this point if i hadn't signed with him but this is something i'll never really know (and i don't think the person you know whose son was delayed in speaking really knows either -after all, we only get to see them develop once)

what i have seen, however, with my son is that he will prefer to sign something if he can't say it. it limits his frustration and enables communication. but he will also sign something and speak it at the same time (e.g. "ball") if he can speak the word. so here is where i should say that it's really important to speak the word as you sign it. would he be giving the more difficult words a shot if he didn't have the signs? i don't know. for me, it was of utmost importance that he be able to express himself and his needs to us and i can say that only once was he ever frustrated bcs of a failure to communicate... he and my sister made a sign for a certain song she sings to him(unbeknown to me) and he expected me to sing it for him when he did the sign but i was puzzled. he did it over and over and tried with my husband but no luck. finally my sister filled us in on the new vocabulary.

the other thing i've seen is that children are absolutely riveted by someone who's signing. they watch much more closely, pay more attention. it's very natural to use your hands when you talk to add exclamation to your words... kids pick up on our impulsive gestures even when we're not intentionally linking them up to words/ phrases. our son likes to purse his lips and tap on his upper lip with his finger and say "hmmm" to show that he's thinking about something... we never actively taught him this but he watches, picks up, and imitates anyway. this is true in some degree for all children.

he's now in daycare and the daycare providers don't sign but they do understand his signs (i gave them a cheat sheet). btw, you may or may not know this but boys are known to develop language skills slightly later than girls. and children who are bilingual also get the hang of language slightly later than their mono-lingual counterparts. aside from signing my son is bilingual so this may have slowed things down for him.

have a lovely pregnancy and a smooth delivery! lots of luck whatever you decide to do

a great site with a video dictionary: http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

I don't have any experience with this but I think the parent should speak and sign with the child so that the child will know how to communicate both ways.