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April 2011 Moms
shaindelr
member
Mac and cheese lover!
Excited about baby sign language gift certificate! :-)
shaindelr
member
One of my co-workers (the woman in charge of special events for the college) stopped me in the hall and asked if for my shower present, I'd want a gift certificate for baby sign language classes. I'm SO excited! Has anyone else done this?
The only people I know who have done it are science people--my best friend here who is a biology professor and my biology professor from undergrad.
If you did it, do you feel like it helped with language development later on?
Just super-super excited! Have a great day, Everyone!
~S
Mac and cheese lover!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Excited about baby sign language gift certificate! :-)
I am a graduate student in Speech-Language Pathology, this topic is especially interesting to me. In our field there is much debate as to whether gestures or sign encourage language development or not. There is one longitudinal study that found an IQ advantage in children exposed to sign, over those who had not been.
My personal opinion? I love watching little ones being able to demonstrate communicative intent way before they can form words. I say its a wonderful tool!
i actually know some sign language and loved teaching my little ones common signs!
it's great when they pick it up, but i still am not sure if it slows the speech b/c they are able to communicate what they want without saying it...but i still love it!!!
Too cool! Thank you so much. My undergrad prof who taught all of his kids Baby Sign Language was very cutting edge/top of the line in everything he did. He had his B.S., M.S., M. Phil, and Ph.D. all from Yale, so I pretty much trust his opinions on most things like this.
And my bio prof friend here said it was SO nice having her daughters have a "signal" for wanting to be breast fed instead of doing something embarrassing in public, not to mention the frustration that LOs have when they can't verbalize yet.
Your studies sound fascinating. Are you at OHSU? You can always PM if you don't want to give out personal info. Take care!
Mac and cheese lover!
June Siggy: Fave pic of Aubrey and me
We didn't do it with our first because he did have a speech delay and our ped advised us that giving him signs would make him even less likely to start speaking (he wasn't really making any sounds at all, never was a "chatty" baby, never babbled, etc.). He never showed frustration at not being able to communicate, so I was happy not to add "one more thing" to the list of things I needed to be doing with my son. But, we did teach a couple of basic signs to our second (more, eat, drink) that he picked up quickly and occasionally still uses in conjunction with saying the actual words. His verbal skills are way ahead of where #1's were at the same point, but I think that's mostly due to a personality difference between the two.
I think it's a great gift idea and regardless, it will be a fun activity for you to do with your baby!
We taught DS a few signs and he still remembers them though he rarely uses them anymore. He learned the words that were important to him first - milk, eat, more and then we taught him words that we wanted him to know like please and thank you. As he learned to speak he would say and sign the words and slowly the signs just sort of vanished.
If you think about it so many of the songs that children learn and love have hand signs or actions that go along with them - The Itsy Bitsy Spider, I'm A Little Teapot, etc. I feel like it's important to use all different forms of intelligence to approach learning and this is a perfect place to begin.
As far as hindering vocab development, well I know that there are people who believe this. I can only speak for Sawyer who has a pretty decent vocabulary. Every time we ever signed something to him we would ALWAYS say the word as well. He enjoyed it and actually just asked me yesterday how to say I love you in "hands"
Sign language will be Olivias second lang. My self and both my girls know sign language.
The day care I work at uses sign language starting in the infant room, and it is amazing watching them learn to ask for milk, more, all done, and more before they can even talk. One little boys parents even did it at home and now he can sign and talk (he's 2 now) for what he wants. Its great.
What a great gift from your friend/co-worker. You will enjoy teaching your LO how to sign.
Mac and cheese lover!
Awww thanks, he's a pretty awesome kid
We use it with Drew. We never had a formal class/book/program though - just taught him signs that were used at a preschool where I used to work or those we looked up on the internet. We found it very useful as he is defintely a kiddo who is frustrated that he can't communicate more. The signing cuts down on that frustration. It's really quite simply to do and we plan to do it again with #2.
His spoken language is developing well (he's picking up new words every day and is starting to use two word phrases). I don't think signing has hindered him in any way.