Baby Sign LanguageWhy do Baby Sign Language
Babies start to develop the ability to understand words well before they are able to speak. This can be a frustrating experience for your baby, because they can understand a lot of what their parents are saying - but have no way of being able to communicate back except crying. Baby Sign Language is a way to teach your baby to communicate with you using their more developed gross motor skills. Signing to your baby is a bridge to normal speech and as your baby starts to develop the fine motor skills necessary for speech, you will start to see the signs discarded.
When to Start Signing
You can start doing baby sign language as early as you want, but you usually won't see much response until baby is over six months so that is a good age to start signing. If you start signing to baby at around six months, you will usually start to see baby signing back around 2-3 months later.
How to Get Started
Start with a small set of ten core signs, selecting things that are important or interesting to baby. Mommy, daddy, brother, sister, milk, dog, light, food, more, bath, and drink are popular first signs. After learning these signs, try to use them as much as possible while you are around baby, integrating them into your day-to-day interactions with baby.
Through repetition, baby will start to imitate the signs. At first the signs will be very vague approximations of the official sign. When you recognize baby doing any signing offer lots of encouragement. Where possible, give baby what they wanted to help them make the connection between doing the sign and the actual thing.
To learn your first few signs, you can take a baby sign language class, get a book, or just look at an online baby sign language dictionary. Most signs are pretty intuitive and designed to be easily learned.
How to Expand Baby's Vocabulary
As baby starts to learn the signs, you can gradually add more signs to your repertoire. At first it will be slow going, but baby will start to learn faster and faster. Some babies will develop vocabularies over 200 signs before they start to transition to speech. If baby enjoys learning signs, you can start incorporating picture books and flash cards to help baby enhance their vocabulary. Again, using signs frequently, repeating them, and encouraging baby's early efforts is key.
Baby Sign Language has a great set of FREE resources to help you teach your baby to start signing. On the site you will find resources including flash cards you can print out; a wall chart to help you learn your first few signs, and a Baby Sign Language Dictionary to help you expand your signing vocabulary. Best of all you can meet a community of signers and exchange tips and tricks to make signing fun.
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