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Parenting after 35
On signs
Okay, so Margaux can say "Hat," "Cat," "That," "Mama," "Duck," "No" and "Dog" in recognizable English, and "Nez" in French. She has pretty good animal sounds for cat, dog, goose (she hisses, it's hilarious), elephant, horse, monkey and fox. Thing is, her signing vocabulary is way larger, and she doesn't even really try to say the words she's signing. I mean, I am really proud of her, she communicates really well with her little flailing hands, but shouldn't she be at least trying to say new words?
I'm going to work harder on getting her to SAY what she's signing, but I was wondering if anyone else was going through this?
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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Re: On signs
I haven't counted lately, but Maddie has about as many "verbal' words as she has "signing" words. I do see a new trend lately where she is aquiring more verbal words faster than the signing words, but I think that is because she is limited by how many signs *I* know, but is learning several words a day.
I find it interesting that she says AND signs about half of her words and either says OR signs the other half - if that makes sense. I just sign as I say a word I know and I am not worried if she says it or not. I figure her articulation will catch up. I definately don't think signing is delaying speaking - if that is what you are concerned about. Doesn't Margeaux also understand/speak french?
I have also seen a lot clearer signs lately, like she used to rub her fingers together in an approximation of "socks" and say "saaah", but now she executes the sign perfectly and says, "sahhhck". To me, it seems like speaking/signing are developing almost equally.
Yeah, she seems to understand English well at this point, I can ask her to do things and she'll frequently do them (or at least ignore me in a way that tells me she knows what I said) and her understanding of French is not too bad either. She can point to body parts and responds pretty well when Rom asks her things.
She'll say and sign together for "hat" and sometimes for "mama" and that's it. The rest she does one or the other. Her signing is way more advanced than her spoken language. I don't want to stop teaching her signs, but I would sure feel better if she used her voice more.
LOL at ignoring you in a way you know she knows... I could have written that myself.
I think that I read that babies who learn two spoken languages speak later. However, it seems like it was still an overall positive thing - such as they had better comprehension and when they did speak they added words more quickly - or something along those lines. Well, with signing, Margueax is learning THREE languages (4 if you count "cat-speak" hehehe). I haven't read much on it lately, so I don't know the newest studies or anything, but I don't think I'd be too worried.
How many words does she sign?
Oh, man. I have to think about that...
Let's see...
Milk, water, juice (which is weird because she won't drink it), drink, thirsty, more, hungry, yummy (she rubs her belly. No idea what the actual sign for yummy is), eat, orange, cereal, cracker, apple, fork, cat, fish, elephant, giraffe, horse (barely, she grabs her ear, which she also does for cow), dog, frog, pig (same as frog), dragon/dinosaur (I don't know if they're different, Margaux does the same for both), bug, mouse, bear, bee, bunny (sort of, she does it totally wrong but we know what she means and she does it consistently - she makes a finger bunny and bounces it) attempts bird and duck but just grabs her lips, tree, flower, grass, play, swing, slide, bath, boat, shoes, socks, shirt, mama, papa, baby (and every person under 10 years old is a baby to her), book, ummm... no colors yet.. oh, right- car, banana, plane, sleep, hurt. There might be some I am missing.
When we're focused on learning new signs, she always tries them out. Sometimes I don't realize she actually knows a sign until we run into it in the wild (like "bee") and I think if she sees something she has seen a sign for but can't remember, she just kind of waves her hands around.
It's actually very cool, I just worry because it's my job, I think. Plus I don't want her pediatrician to yell at me for delaying her speech development. Maybe I'm paranoid.
I know it's easy to tell another mother not to worry - so yeah, I get it, but honestly, I think she is doing really great. Granted, that wouldn't be much of a help if your pedi didn't think so, but I would think any pedi worth his/her salt would consider signs when counting words.
She has a nice variety of signs. I think rubbing the tummy is universal for "yummy" as is saying "yummy/nummy". We never used it with Maddie but she started it on her own.
It's so funny because Maddie had a hard time getting the difference between horse and cow for a while. Interestingly, she got the signs right before she ever said horse. She would sign horse and say, cow - but then sign and say cow correctly. It was pretty funny. Maybe horses just look like skinny cows to kids. Maddie also calls everyone who hasn't hit puberty "baby". She gets the side eye from 4 y.o.'s everywhere
I don't know! I think we'll keep it up as long as it interests her, unless it's causing some sort of problem. Erin, my bio-daughter, is fluent in ASL because her mom has substantial hearing issues, I think it'd be neat if they could speak it together.
We started initially because I live in deadly fear of toddler tantrums, and signing is supposed to help with that by decreasing the frustration they feel when they can't tell you what they want. We've discovered it doesn't help when what she wants is something she can't have, but I still hope it'll do some good.
We also want to help open her brain to multiple languages, since half her family speaks very little or no English.