Well I have a son who is a month and a half old and I want to teach him to sign so that he can better communicate his needs to me before he even learns to speak. My questions are when should I start to teach him and what resources are out there for baby sign language?
.
Join the Conversation
Leave a comment
I say about 8 months
You can start at birth, supposedly the sooner you start signing to your child, the sooner they’ll start signing back. I started a tad too late with my daughter, we didn’t really get into it until she was about 13 or 14 months old. I’d highly recommend doing lots of signs to your son way before that. With my son to be, I’ll probably start at about 6 months. The dvd’s by Signing Time are great!! Expensive, but great. Good luck~
If you for sure want him to learn it., teach it right now as you’re talking to him. Below are some really good sign language sites my daughter and I were playing around with.
Teach him ASAP and teach him all the languages you can before he turns 5 b/c its really easy to learn when your that young plus it increases the babies IQ.
well i’m a mum of 2 hearing kids age 4 & 2… i’m not deaf but have learnt AUSLAN at Perth TAFE ( Australian Sign Language). I’m abit rough at it now but still teach words i know to them & they luv it even startin to follow & learn.
Want ya kid to learn start early atart now they may not follow just yet but they are watching your every move until they get their co-ordination & copy u.
Normimah 29yrs.
Married 5 Half Years.
Mum of 2
4yr old Daughter Jazmina Binti Danial
2yr old Son Azhar Bin Danial.
Depending on the size of your library, you can probably find a lot of books and DVDs on baby signs. If you find one that you really like, you could then buy a copy.
You might look on Amazon.com, too. You will find reviews of books there, so you’ll get a sense of whether other people thought that they were helpful before you choose one. You might find good quality used books and DVDs on Amazon and on eBay.
You should start using the signs as you’re talking to him now. Maybe focus on the simple words for now.
As he starts to gain more control over his arms and hands, you can start helping him make the signs as you talk, too.
What a great way to help your baby communicate! So fun, too!
I taught my eldest to sign when she was 6 months old. I didn’t get much in return, as it was really too early for her. I think the best advice I got, is to start when your baby makes his/her first sign – waving bye. So, I waited until mine was 8 months old – when she started waving. We started with only a few signs at first…milk, more, eat, and ball. She signed milk within 2 wks – it wasn’t perfect, but she did it.
By 12 months, she was proactive in signing about 6 signs – slow process at first. By 15 months, she knew about 20. By 18 months, she knew 100+ including colors, animals, foods. I pretty much stopped counting…and by then her verbal ability was catching up to her signing. By 2 years, she was talking in complete sentences, so we dropped most of the signing. Now, she’s 2.5 years and she has a 5 month old little sister. We are already starting to refresh our memory of signing so we can teach her sister soon.
We mostly used Signing Time! videos to teach us both ASL. http://www.signingtime.com They have a ton of materials now, including books and flashcards. I think they have the best program out there, and one of the very few that actually teach ASL. I rented the videos from the library…we would watch them together…learn the signs and then you – the parent – has to be pretty diligent in signing regularly. For instance, once she could sign “more”, I would ask her to sign “more” for every bite of baby food during a meal. At least in the beginning, it reinforced the idea that she was communicating her needs to me with the sign – and gave her lots of practice. By the time she was 15/18 months, my daughter was obsessed with watching the ST videos, so I bought videos 1-9. Well worth the money! But you don’t have to buy them now, as ST is on many PBS stations (check the ST website or your local PBS website). I have our favorites TiVoed.
BTW, I specifically chose to teach ASL so that if my daughter ever met a HOH or Deaf person, she would be able to communicate. There are lots of other products out there that aren’t ASL, so you should decide what you want. Also, for a dictionary of ASL signs, http://www.alspro.com website is a great resource. Comes in handy when your child sees a rabbit and looks inquisitively at you wanting to know the sign…and you have no idea. During our signing explosion, my daughter wanted to know the sign for EVERYTHING. I looked up signs on this site every night to “report” back.
Good luck to you!
Go ahead and start doing the signs as you do things now. He won’t be able to sign back for several months, but he’ll be used to the signs and will know what they all mean!
Start signing now. You talk to your baby right? Talk with sign also. Sign what you say, when you say it. I love you, hungry, bath, Mommy, Daddy – those are all words you say a lot I bet, so learn those signs now, if you don’t know them already. Children learn language by immersion – there is not an age that you can sit a baby down and have a language lesson – its just a part of their surroundings and they pick it up. I’ve know babies to sign milk and I love you at only a few months old – they gain control of their hands much sooner than they gain control of their vocal chords.
If you sign fluently now, fantastic. If you are just learning yourself, try to find an ASL class in your community. If you can learn and teach your children ASL, rather than individual signs, you will be giving them an actual second language they can use throughout life and open up the deaf community to them. Do make sure you use actual ASL (American Sign Language) books and videos though – some baby sign books are just made up signals, not actual signing.
if you sign the same time as speaking your son will learn to connect the meaning of the signs & should pick it up easily, good luck
You can start sign to him right now when you talk. If you just do it when you ask him something or say anything he will pick it up. They learn it faster then you know. I have a friend who’s mother is deaf and she signed to her daughter from the time she was born and by six months old she was starting to sign back. Do you know ASL yourself? And there’s a program on PBS that is called Sign Time, it’s also on DVD. That should help.
They start to learn from us at a very early age, go ahead and do the signing, He will not fully understand what you are doing, you can put the pieces together as he is able to better understand.