From the article: Using Baby Sign Language with Your Baby
What are the benefits of babies signing? Are you a hearing parent who used baby sign language with your baby? How did using the sign language help you, and how did it help your baby? Do you have any particular examples to share of times when using baby sign language really helped both you and your baby?
Signing Distracts from Itch
- My baby girl Marcie has eczema and by chance, we found that she loved watching sign language dvd. Even better, sometimes we could distract her from scratching by getting her to sign! For parents with eczema children, welcome to visit eczemablues.com for more tips on managing your child's eczema.
- —MeiMarcieMom
Our Experience with Baby Signing
- I am happy you started using sign language. I was a case manager for the Deaf when I had a child at home that did not speak. She was 15 months old and did not talk. We signed everything to her. Her first sentence to my Mom was cookie please. Mom called me and told me what she did and I explained she wanted a cookie. She went from no words, to signs, to speech. Sign helped her a great deal. When she was in kindergarten she came home and signed the letter F and said Mom I forgot how to write this letter. I laughed and showed her how to write it. She used it around people who were deaf and was not good with written language at first. She had to work on that throughout school. When she was in high school she took Spanish, Latin and English. She got A's in all those classes in addition to Algebra and Science. I feel it made her stronger in all her subjects and taught her about a wonderful culture. She now works in a bank and is 20 years old.
- —Guest MaryAnn
Finger Spelling and Kitty Pee
- My daughter was born with bilateral atresia and microtia. I taught her how to finger spell when she was potty-training. She would talk about the cat using the litter box (ca go pee i- bo). I'd respoond, "Yes, the cat pees in the box." I put her hand on my voice box or in my mouth so she could feel the sounds or the tongue position, and tell her that "ca" is C-A-T and I'd finger spell it. She learned to speak beautifully. The downside was that when we moved to another state, her teachers refused to believe she was as deaf as she was: she spoke too well.
- —Guest Kathy
Praise God for Sign Language!!
- My eldest daughter didn't talk until she was almost three, my husband was concerned so he took an ASL class. He began to teach her simple things like "mommy, daddy, milk, food/eat, more, change(diaper), finished/done." She took to it better than her younger siblings, that was her only communication for a long time. Later I took ASL and taught all my of my children more signs that I still use today. It became so much easier to sign to them from across the room then to raise my voice while out and about shopping.
- —4yesno_mommy_yoyo
