noah has just started actually doing some signs that we have taught him - namely eat and milk. the thing is, today he walked around the house constantly signing eat. he does it appropriately - like if he sees a container of puffs on the counter, or, he will crawl to his highchair and sign - so i think he gets what it means. he has a pretty solid eating schedule down and he never needs "snacks" between meals (except the built in afternoon snack at 3) but today, he would get super fussy everytime he signed eat and i didnt give him food. could he possibly be so hungry? we literally took him out of the highchair after dinner and he started signing again! is it common for babies to just sign a lot at first because its something new?
DS1 10/5/09

Re: ? about baby sign language
Well, he might be genuinely hungry. It wouldn't hurt to offer him a snack.
However, we've taught DS sign language because of his speech disorder, and when he first figured out signing he was constantly running around signing "more".
He's now pretty good about using them when he needs something.
i did give him several extra snacks today and he gobbled all of them up. it just seemed strange that he could be soooo much more hungry today when he got the same amount of food at his regular meals today.
We've been dealing with the *same* thing with DS the last two days! The kid will not stop eating. DH and I are pretty convinced he's going through a growth spurt, which is exactly what your LO could be dealing with too!
It took DD awhile to really get what signs mean and to use them only at appropriate times.
I think it's like learning anything new, they use it and see what happens.
DD eventually used the eat sign to tell us that we wanted something, anything! So, the meaning changed a lot, and now she doesn't use it anymore.
She's using a lot more signs, and uses them all appropriately.
My guess is that he's just trying it out to see what he can get out of it.