I remember standing in line at Joann Fabrics with Magoo when she was about seven months old. She was in her baby carrier and was frantically doing the sign for “milk” as I waited in the excruciatingly slow moving line. The sign for “milk” looks a bit like a wave, so the woman in front of me kept cooing about how it was so cute that she was waving. I was too flustered to do more than smile, but I kept thinking to myself that if I don’t get out of this store and get my baby some milk, the entire block will know that it’s milk she wants and not a friendly wave.
I started teaching her sign language a few weeks before she turned six months old, and she caught on pretty quickly. We did the standard signs — more, all done, milk, and so on.
When Magoo began speaking, the signs faded away as they usually do, and I didn’t think about baby sign language again until Goosie was about 15 months old. She was slightly late in developing her speech, and I being the obsessivly freaked out proactive parent that I am, I decided it was better to take her into speech therapy early rather than wait until a full blown problem developed. One of the first things the therapist recommended was sign language, and I started up. Her growth was remarkable. As soon as she caught on that she could sign what she wanted, she started catching on that she could also say what she wanted. Within months she had dozens upon dozens of words and signs. It was a fun family activity because Magoo was learning along with her and helping to reinforce the signs.
Seeing as how we had such good luck with signing with the older two, you would have thought we would have started it right away with Mae as well, but with three kids, two of them quite young, it was hard to fit in a feeding much less sign our way through it. So now Mae is 15 months old, and I’m realizing that we haven’t really done any signs at all with her.
This had been weighing on my mind when I found out that there’s a new baby sign language book out there. I’ve read a few signs books and I’ve viewed some YouTube videos with signs in them, but there are a few things about Easy Guide to Baby Sign Language in particular that I enjoyed.
The first thing I appreciated is that there are real ASL (American Sign Language) signs. Different books handle the issue of signs differently. You’ll find some do real ASL signs mixed with some made up signs, some do exclusively made up signs because they believe they will be easier for babies to remember, and some, like this book, stick with strict ASL.
I really appreciate that the book sticks with ASL. Most babies naturally drop the signing once they start speaking the words, but if you want your child to be able to communicate with others who sign, then the standard system is obviously the best. In years past, I’ve had dreams of taking sign language all the way and letting the girls really adopt a second language that we could use to serve those in the hearing impaired community, but life with three kids is crazy, and we never quite make it that far. But Magoo likes helping me teach the babies signs, so I’m very grateful that she is learning the correct hand movements, and maybe one day she will take it farther.
I also appreciated how this book is organized by activity — you can find bedtime signs, mealtime signs, etc. With Magoo, I could choose any signs I wanted, but with Mae, it works best when I have specific times for signing because I don’t have much free time at all. This way I can focus now on meal signs and then later incorporate some others as time allows. And there is an index for you to quickly look up any sign if you don’t have the time to search by activity.
If you are interested in baby signing, I highly recommend this book. Right now it is available for download at…
Or you can learn more at the Baby Sign Center website.
If you decide to do signs or if you have done them in the past, let me know. I’m always interested in hearing others’ experiences!
I was given a free copy of this book to review; however, all opinions are my own, and I would not recommend a product I don’t believe in.