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January 2011 Moms
How do you feel about...
Your Baby Can Read or teaching your baby sign language?
I've heard that the sign language can actually delay their speech development. I spoke in clear, full sentences very early and I would love my children to be able to, only because it made things easier for my mom, but so would sign language if it would help them indicate what they wanted, right?
Part of me thinks it's as silly as putting headphones on your belly and playing Beethoven and we should just let them be babies and not try to push.
Thoughts?
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Re: How do you feel about...
We are planning to use sign language. As long as you use it in conjunction with speaking regularly to, with, and around your baby, I don't see why it would cause delays.
My nephew was a very frustrated, cranky baby until his parents introduced signing. After that, he was capable of expressing himself and that cut WAY down on his frustration and crying.
~EDD Nov 18, 2017 with my IUI success story~
[spoiler]
~EDD Nov 18, 2017 with my IUI success story~
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So funny that you asked this, because I watched a "Your Baby Can Read" infomercial this morning. I'd never heard of it before.
I can't decide how I feel about it. On one hand, I'd love to give my baby a jumpstart in literacy, because it's an issue that's near and dear to me. On the other hand, I do find value in letting babies be babies.
During the infomercial, a lot of parents who'd tried it said that their kids truly had fun watching the DVDs and reading the books, so if that's true, it's certainly a plus for YBCR. But, I'm not sure that it's something I have strong feelings about.
I'm not as sold on baby sign language. I see the value in it and think it's great for people who choose to go that route...I'm just not one of them.
I was not into the sign language thing, and if anything thought it would be detrimental until I spent a day babysitting a 7 month old.
She kept making the same hand motion at different points during the day, and it was a distinct, deliberate motion different from just playing or flailing around.
They definitely didn't teach her anything, but it made me think that she could have easily learned to signal what she wanted if they had tried that program.
I agree, honestly I think my speaking early was a reflection on my mother, not me. I'm no great orator now, in fact I'm relatively quiet. She talks SO MUCH that I think being the first and spending time alone with her (she was a SAHM) just talking all the time made me more verbal.
We're not going to do anything with Your Baby Can Read...I really don't know anything about it.
But we're friends with some Deaf people and DH and I have been learning ASL. We've been talking about introducing some signs to our children, not sure at what age, but we feel strongly that knowing how to communicate with people who are Deaf is just as important (MORE important in our eyes) than learning a second verbal language.
I don't know much about the Your Baby Can read program, so I really can't comment.
However, I can say that I did use signs with my daughter and found it to be really helpful. Even before she started talking much, she had built up a "vocabulary" of about 30 signs, and so she could communicate her needs and wants to use (nurse, more, all done, etc), but also, she would get so excited when she would see something and could "tell" us what it was. She would get so excited to spot a dog or a cat and do her "doggy" and "kitty" signs.
And although, I know that many people are concerned that signing will delay speech, there are actually studies done that have shown that babies who use signs actually tend to have a higher vocabulary than those that don't. Since they start using "language" at an early age, they seem to make the connection earlier.
If anyone is interested in the topic, I highly recommend this book :
https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Talk-Before-Third/dp/0071615032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275497445&sr=8-1
I would be interested in teaching our baby/ies some signs before they can speak, but when they know what they want- things like milk, sleep, maybe basic stuff like that.
I don't know a speck of ASL (and I wouldn't want tot each them that "fake" baby sign language) so it would be hard to learn it to teach it to baby. But I do think a few choice words could be helpful.
I've done sign language with DS starting at 6 months. It worked but I wasn't a huge fan - just NMS. He talks clearly now though. I don't think sign language hindered his speech any. I did not do it with Addie. No time, lol.
As for Your Baby Can Read? Being a teacher, I think it's a gimmick. Your child will read when he/she is ready to read IMO.
I'm not a big believer in YBCR. I will already be trying to teach my child my (nearly) second language from an early age and I feel like that will be challenging enough. If I knew more sign language I'd probably go with that, but I'd rather stick with what I know.
Of course, teaching any second language, sign language included, is incredibly beneficial to a child. They have a limited window to really suck up a language so it becomes second nature, but if you take advantage of it they have a much easier time learning more languages in the future.
I can only offer input on signing: We and daycare did it for the basics: More, please, eat, milk. The main things she'd be especially whiny about when she wanted them. They didn't delay her speech, they just held her over until she talked more. Now, she'll sign and ask for these things.
I do have a friend who taught her child quite a bit of signing and she talks quite a bit less than mine, but whether it's her in general or the signing, who knows?
I put headphones on my belly with DD, but it certainly wasn't beethoven. It was whatever music I listened to, and some Rockabye Baby music. https://rockabyebabymusic.com/
I'm very big on early childhood learning but not th particular your baby can read system, once you wade into it it's a HUGE money making stunt more than true teaching. thereare STACKS of books and cards and dvds and.. well suffice it to say the complete system would cost as much as a couple years of private school education!! i think reading with children and teaching them the fundamentals of letter sound recognition and saying the words with you is highly effective. however the dvd series is fun for kisd to watch and if they're going to watch something on a tv it may aswell be something stimulating rather than mind numbing. so I'd say if you come across a used set for cheap go for it, put it with the collection of einsteins and sesame streets etc LOL ?(however hubby wants badly to get this system and turn our kids into 18 month old literary experts, he had profound learning difficulties and he's just afraid our kids will face those challenges. )
I also have mixed feelings on early signing. While i will be teaching my child sign language as they learn to speak, teaching them the sign as they master the words, i probably wont go the other way around. Only because i have worked with a few children who have had major speech delay issues. but i will say these cases were entirely the biproduct of parents who werent wiling to take the time and energy to encourage and require speech.(as oposed to children with developmental or hearing issues in which case signing is obviously incredibly important) The children I worked with in particular were so used to demanding what they wanted by signing that when asked to speek they became intensly frustrated. So it's important to find a time in a child's development when speech is physically and cognitively possible to transition from one to the other.? Kids are smart, they'll do what works easiest. and if signing milk gets them the milk and they are never asked to say the word milk they arent ?always inclined to bother. I think if parents encourage both signing and verbal skill building both will develop simultaniously, rather like a child who learns two languages from two parents speaking in the home.
when it comes down to it einstein didnt have baby einstein LOL and Shakespeare only spoke one language. I think there's entirely too much pressure on parents to make their children little super geniouses rather than caring empathetic honesty and decent people. I have this terrible image of the world being run by baby stuey LOL?
PS studies have been done where sound waves were measured in the womb and sound form outside the belly, be if voices or music on headphones on the belly werent able to pass audibly through the tissue water etc and be picked up by baby's ears as anything distinguishable. remember the baby's in water with water in it's ears.. anyone who's had wicked bad swimmers ear knows how hard it is to hear like that! And the womb is a place with alot of wooshy pulsey digestive noises going on that kinda drowns everything into a background noise. HOWEVER mom's voice is kinda heard.. because our voices cause the fluid in our body to vibrate aswell as our bone structure, those vibrations are transfered far more to baby and they even apeer to react!(babys have been shown to react to exterior sounds too but usually loud ones, and i dont htink we want to take mega phones to our bellies! LOL) it's not so much words they can pick up as tonality which is a neat thought. So maybe we should all be singing our ABC's? :-D But it also makes total sence as to why music sooths babies so well. our voices sound very musical when they're just tonal shifts, and our heart beats that they hear are very rhythmic.
When you teach sign language to babies it is teaching them a second language. Even though it goes hand in hand (no pun intended) with regular English it is a separate language. When you teach more than one language at a time you increase the neural pathways in your child's developing brain. They will be more adept at language in the long run. If you study their overall language of both forms (Primary in this case English and secondary in this case sign language but could also be Spanish, Italian, whatever) they will be at or above level with their peers for overall language acquired. It may seem to an outsider that their verbal speech is delayed because they aren't taking into account the other communication (signing). For instance if a child at age one should know 20 words (just throwing a number out there I realize it's not accurate) and your child only speaks 5 but can sign at least 15 they are at their level. Sorry if that's confusing but I can't think of a better way to explain it.
I'm a huge fan of signing with children of all ages. I seriously considered becoming a speach language pathologist in college and I've taken many ASL courses in college.
Signing is a great resource for anyone developmentally delayed or not. Studies and experience has shown that signing with children does NOT hinder or delay learning to speak, it usually does the quite the opposite. The more sensories used the easier it is to learn so signing in addition to speaking helps build a great foundation of learning and understanding.
My oldest son started signing at 7 months old and I was amazed at how much it helped to reduce tantrums and frustrations. It wIt wasn't ever a "let's teach him" sort of approach rather we just signed and talked about the things we did all day long. Now he's 3 years old and I get comments all.the.time. about how verbal he is and how articulate (even the nurse at my 1st doctors appointment yesterday said it).
A fun resource my family enjoys is the series Signing Time (https://www.signingtime.com)
I also have to add that I'm not for YBCR because if you read to your child often then they will pick it up quickly. There's no reason that you need a program to do this, I think it's relying too much on the video.
With spoken speech as someone mentioned before it is important that -just as with reading comprehension- you speak to your child often. "Mommy is cutting up the vegetables for dinner. The cucumber is long and green." It may seem silly to jabber on but it helps them to begin understand concepts.
With playing music to your belly they may not be able to remember the music or hear it exactly, but just as with your or your husband's voice they pick up on the rhythm and tone of what they hear as opposed to meaning or specifics. They may not understand when you talk to your belly saying, "Mommy loves you my sweet baby." but they begin to learn the patterns of your speech and the way you talk and how your voice sounds apart from another.
I think your baby can read is a waste of money.
We said we were going to try and teach ds sign language, and it never happened.
A close friend of mine got my son the YBCR DVDs for his 1st birthday. They are simply videos that display a word, a person (adult or child) says the word twice and then they play a short 5-10 second clip of someone demonstrating the word as the word is being used in a sentence. Then 2-4 times during the video they play songs with demonstrations (Itsy Bitsy Spider...Head, Shoulders, knees and Toes). That's pretty much the gist of it.
I think they are good videos, definitely don't see any harm in them and I'm not sure why people are so against them. I asked a similar question about them on the 6-12 board months ago and the response was more negative than encouraging. I agree with "why not just let them be babies", but if you are planning to read to your child anyway and allow them to watch educational programming anyway, why not pop one of these DVDs in. It's really just a matter of if you want to spend the money on them (which I didn't because the whole set was like $200 or something like that including the books), but we ended up getting them as a gift which my girl told me she bought on eBay, just the 5 DVDs for $50.
HTH
Big fan of teaching signs. I know anecdotes are not data, but my nephew was also taught signs and had no speech delays - if anything his communication skills were above average as a toddler. With several signs my son says the word as he's signing, so he seems interested in both aspects.
As for YBCR, never heard of it, but I'm not a fan of planned reading programs in general. Even if it did "work," I wouldn't do it. My own opinion is that there is too much focus in the U.S. generally on reading at an early age. Reading is obviously important, but my fear is that by focusing on one specific skill, like reading, I would be taking away time to play and explore, which is also very important to brain development.
I don't think Your Baby Can Read teachs your baby how to read. It teaches your baby to recognize words by sight. Reading to your child, working on letter and sounds, etc, and eventually phonics teaches your child to read.
As for sign language, it's a second language. The same parts of the brain fire up during signing as during speech, so it's not necessarily pantomime. We taught DD a few signs, and she had no speech delays. I think if a kid's going to have speech delays, they're going to have them. Signing would acutally help. And supposedly signing helps build vocabulary, because kids see that communication works, and they want to try more and more ways to communicate.
we started doing just a couple signs (milk, more, all done) around 6 mo with dd and nothing came of it. fast forward to 12 mo and we tried again and she can now sign "more" and "all done". these have been so helpful to reduce the fussying/mess making around meals.
now that she is starting to talk more, we also make sure that she "says" these words as she signs them. and by says, i mean mumbles something as she's still working on her language at this age (14 months).
Totally agree. The problem with the whole YBCR thing is that many parents think their kids are "learning" by watching the videos, when in fact they're just memorizing. Which really isn't helpful at all to brain development, much less the actual developmental task of reading. If you want to show your kids the videos, fine, no big deal. You might get 10 minutes to go to the bathroom or clean up the kitchen, and Lord knows that's necessary sometimes. And your kid might gain some fun party tricks.
Just don't pretend you're doing them a favor by having them watch something "educational", when it's a million times MORE educational to spend that same 10 minutes actually reading a book out loud to your child, identifying pictures within the story and letting them learn in context. So if you want to do YBCR, more power to you. You're probably not going to harm your child in any way (although the jury's still out on watching any TV under 2). Just call it what it actually is... a time-filler, same as Dora or Yo Gabba Gabba.
My father taught deaf/multi-handicapped children for many years and was fluent in ASL. He taught many signs (not the actual language) to my mom and they used these signs with my older brother in conjunction with speaking. Fast forward a few years and by age 2 1/2, my brother still was not speaking because he could communicate effectively signing. Like a pp said, his language development was fine - he knew signs and COULD say the words - but he refused to verbalize his desires. My mom would tell him to say "more" and he'd say "more" but when he actually wanted more, he'd sign it. Now, this was 30 years ago and I don't think baby sign language programs existed. They just did what they thought was right so maybe they did it wrong. The idea backfired on them. They eventually had to stop acknowledging his signing to get him to speak. The tantrums that they avoided when he was younger came when he was older and frustrated but he finally started speaking. That being said, they did NOT sign with me. Again, maybe the programs show the "right" way to do it, but signing and speaking together did not work with my brother.
I took ASL in college and have been using a few signs with my son for about 6 months now. He understands them, but doesn't use them. He communicates his desires pretty effectively by gesturing, though, so I'm not pushing it.
My mom offered to get him YBCR. I said no, thanks. She thinks it'd be great to have a child prodigy, I guess. If he has trouble learning to read on his own, then maybe I'll look into some sort of program. For now, he can be a 1-year-old.