An Indispensable Baby Item…for FREE! October 11, 2010

Since our girls were born, I’ve had a number of friends and acquaintances ask me what my “must have” baby items are. 

While I certainly have my favorite baby blankets and lullaby CD’s from the girls’ first few months, the real lifesaver for me over the past year has been teaching the girls the basics of baby sign language.

Our girls began signing around 10 months old.  Today, at 21 months old, although they are developing a pretty sizeable vocabulary, they still sign certain words and phrases.  Having had this experience with our girls, I am a big proponent of baby sign language helping to reduce the frustration that many infants and toddlers experience at not being able to communicate their needs and wants.  And it’s also allowed for so much fun interaction.

I used the book “Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk” as a guide.  Jenny posted a few months ago about her success using the “Baby Signing Time” video series.

While I usually appreciate an old-fashioned hand-held reference book, you really don’t have to spend any money to take advantage of the benefits of baby sign language.

You can get an overview of baby sign language, as well as access a dictionary of basic signs, on http://www.babysignlanguage.com/.

Here’s the general methodology I followed:

• Identify a couple of key phrases to focus on.  For me, those were “all done”, which I hoped would tell me when to stop coaxing the girls to eat their broccoli, and “sleep”, which I hoped would help avoid meltdowns from overtired babies. 
• Be consistent with using the sign every time you say the word or phrase.  Starting when they were about eight months old, every time the girls would finish eating, I would declare, “All done!” I would make the sign, and I would physically move their hands to make the sign, as well.  I consistently did this until they eventually caught on, around 10 months old. 
• Gradually expand the sign language vocabulary, using the most common words to the baby’s environment.  After the girls had been successfully signing for a month or so, I opted to focus on two new words, “ball” (of which we have at least 115 in our den) and “bird”.  Every time I picked up a ball, I would make the sign.  And whenever we observed a bird through the window, or as we were walking in the neighborhood, I would flap my arms.  I’m sure I looked a little nutty to the unindoctrinated, but the girls began to incorporate these signs after a couple of weeks.  They would just beam when I would interpret their sign correctly.

We continued in this fashion, adding new words every couple of weeks.   

Teaching the girls sign language did take some perseverance in the beginning, but after they got the first couple of signs under their belts onesies, things seemed to evolve very easily.

Mandy

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