Baby sign

I started teaching Little A to sign at around 6 months (if I remember corectly). We started with about 10 basic signs. More, milk, mama, daddy, drink, all done, bath, fan, book & cat. I was pretty consitent with it for a good 4 or 5 months. But then I went through a short period where I stopped (but I did re-start it after a few weeks of realizing I wasn’t doing it as often). Even though I had put a list on the fridge of the signs we were working on, after months of signing without any sign of comprehension, I started to forget to do it as often.
Well, apparently she was comprehending b/c 3 weeks ago, at 15 months, she out of the blue signed back to me!

We were at Target doing our weekly errands with little A in the shopping cart. I was handing her dried fruit a few at a time while browsing the store. As I’m pushing her, I feel her hands moving and look down and she’s signing MORE. At first I thought it was accidental. It’s a pretty basic sign that can be confused with the clapping motion. So, I passed her 1 piece at a time and waited. Sure enough, the fingers start moving and again she’s signing more! more! more! I couldn’t believe it. All this time I wondered if she was getting it and she was. I must have given her ½ the bag while we were in there just to watch her keep signing to me.

Since then, I’ve seen what looks like “all done” & “milk”, but not enough to say that she is definitely signing those words.

For those of you expecting, or even if you have a young child who isn’t speaking yet, I highly recommend starting to sign with your little one. It’s never too late to start. The book Baby Talk is awesome and I definitely recommend you pick it up. It was recommended to me by other moms and it’s great. We also have This Baby Einstein DVD. I don’t know if the dvd helped as much as me doing the signs with her but we figured that since we were letting her watch one dvd a day, why not let this be one of them.

I’ve heard from other mom’s that once they start signing one word, a signing explosion soon follows. Fun times ahead. I’ll keep you guys posted on our progress.