New Mom Old Mom

Our family decided several months ago to introduce sign language to our baby and we are so glad we did.  She just celebrated her first birthday and is signing like crazy, showing us signs for ‘nurse’ ‘more’ ’eat’ ‘all done’  ‘daddy’ and ‘mommy’ (which she also says). We think she’s even given us signs for ’sleep’ and ’bath.’

DB was about eight months old when we first introduced signs to her, and it has been a fun and exciting process.  She returned her first sign within about two weeks! We used the “Sign With Your Baby” book and DVD set by Dr. Joseph Garcia.  It was VERY easy to do and we learned the signs right along with her.  Dr. Garcia’s method, which is based on ASL (American Sign Language) encourages you to start out with a few of the most common and easy signs for a baby — eat, more and nurse or bottle.  By doing this gradually, parents don’t need to have a sign language cram session or become experts.  You learn right along with your baby, a few signs at a time.  We were surprised at how quickly DB learned to repeat the sign for more and nurse.  And if you’re worried about whether signing delays spoken language, Dr. Garcia addresses this concern in his book.  He states that “A considerable amount of research supports the fact that children exposed to several languages early in life achieve higher levels of language competency later on.”  And, he cites research indicating that babies who use signs learned to talk more readily than their non-signing counterparts.

We have “living” research right on our own cul de sac.  We heard about baby sign language from two of our neighbors who used it with their children.  Both families having young children who learned signing as infants and who talk just fine and spoke right on time.  The selling point for us was the idea that giving DB a way to communicate with us before she had spoken language would ease the frustration that all babies feel when they can’t communicate their wants and needs.  Plus, our older children are so excited when they also can understand what she is trying to communicate.

Even more exciting is to watch DB apply the signs we’ve given her to use in one situation (such as ‘more’ for more food) to another situation.  A few weeks ago, DH was letting DB pull the cord to our ceiling fan and light, and she was delighted to see the light go on and off.  When Daddy set her down to continue folding laundry, she gave him the ‘more’ sign and pointed to the light.  Of course, DH reinforced the behavior and endulged her for several more minutes with the ceiling fan. Since then, she’s used ‘more’ in several additional situations.  It’s adorable.

I’m obviously endorsing this process.  And I’ll add that I think Dr. Garcia’s signing “kit” would make a great baby shower present.  Additional resources from Dr. Garcia (such as a Yahoo group, news clips and even a clip from the movie “Meet the Fockers” in which baby Jack uses his sign language to communicate) are available here.