Baby Sign

I have always been obsessed with parenting. Years before I had children I would read parenting books & magazines and take classes. I would say it was for daycare, but I really was doing it for my future children. Odd, I know! I knew that when I was finally blessed with children that I wanted to teach them as much as I could. I was intrigued by different videos that I checked out from the library like teaching your baby to read and on baby sign.

A small part of me was hesitant about teaching baby sign and felt that it was one more thing for me to do to produce another "super baby." Naturally as a mother I want my baby to be the smartest, but I realize that she is only 13 mns and has a long time until she is expected to do many things. As I read about the benefits of teaching your child sign, I knew that I wanted to do this.

According to Eileen Ladino, here are 5 reasons to teach sign language to hearing children.
1. help babies talk sooner . . . and boost spoken vocabulary
2. empower babies to direct adults' attention to what they want to talk about
3. reduce frustration
4. provide a strong foundation for early literacy
5. stimulate intellectual development

Signing for us hasn't been a very easy task. Last September, Olivia (when she was 6 mns) and I took a 12 week Baby Sign Language course at the University. By the end of the semester, Olivia had one sign; music. I honestly felt very disappointed that she wasn't signing more and thought that possibly because her verbal language is through the roof that she wouldn't sign. Heidi, our sign teacher, told us about one of her students that could understand sign but refused to sign back. I continued to sign as much as a I could. Some days more then others. It always seemed that when I would start to slack, Livy would sign a new word and I would be motivated to sign more. At first she would add a new sign once a month or so and now it is nearly every day. It is so exciting and rewarding to see her communicate with me. Frustration levels are down and we are all much happier then I could imagine without sign. Just the other day she took my hand and headed to the pantry and signed more. She wanted a snack.

She can sign: pig (her latest), horse, cat, dog, cow, bear, bird, duck, phone, fan, baby, stinky (as in poopy diapers), music, ball, brush teeth, brush hair, more, book, milk, please, bath, mom, dad, wash hands, and bye-bye (that's a sign right?!).

I mainly try to sign different things throughout the day. It is recommended to teach your child three basic signs to begin with: more, eat and milk. I also will turn on the Signing Time videos once in a while. My only problem with Signing Time is that the songs are super catchy and I will wake up humming them at 2am!