Tuesday, February 15, 2011

To Sign or Not to Sign?

It wasn't really a question in our family, but I can see why it might be for others. I have been posting just little tidbits about Braden catching on to signing, but I wanted to do a bigger post about it. My best friend, Natalie, sent me a text one night just asking why we were teaching Braden to sign. It wasn't judgmental, it's just what friends do! So I wanted to do a post about signing. I'm not explaining it or justifying it, it's a choice that we've made that works for us and I just want to teach you about it! :)

So, firstly I saw Joy and Laura teach their kids basic signs:
  • please
  • thank you
  • more
They probably did more signs, but those were the ones that I saw them use the most. These are the signs that we are teaching Braden and he has done all of them, not always perfect, but pretty darn close!
  • more
  • milk
  • done
  • bath
  • cracker
  • please
 By far his most consistent signs are "done" and "milk". He also has learned that "done" applies to when he is done: eating, drinking, reading a book, playing...etc. The reason why we've decided to teach Braden basic sign language, is not to teach it to him as a 2nd language, but just to bridge him from being completely frustrated and not communicating at all, to actually speaking and saying the words. We are teaching him to say the words, as well as to do the signs. It's working really well for him. Just this morning he crawled over to his high chair, stood up, looked up at me and did the sign for milk and said num num! Where as before, he might have just cried and fussed for no reason until I guessed what he wanted.

So here's a couple of videos of him signing...
Done:


Milk:


So that's kind of the what's what about baby signing!
at 11:32 AM
Labels: , , ,

2 comments:

  1. Marie and WesFebruary 15, 2011 at 11:40 AM

    I love it! Liv does "all done" and "more" and I love it because it TOTALLY cuts down on the fuss which is really them trying to tell us what they need. I love anything that helps us communicate better!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bev ThrondsonFebruary 15, 2011 at 8:06 PM

    Any speech path will tell you that signing is the logical first step in communication. In the preschool program where I work, most of the children that we have, have severe communication delays. We always start them out with sign language. They are thrilled to finally have a way of telling people what they want rather than pointing and grunting, or taking someone's hand to guide them to what they want.

    It alleviates so much frustration.

    Braden is getting so capable of sign that he picks up on a new sign almost any time I'm down! He totally realizes now that what I'm doing, and showing him with our hands... means something, so he watches very intently, and is 100% cooperative when I'm doing a hand over hand demonstration for him, to learn a new sign.

    It's the cutest thing EVER!!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and leave a comment! I reply to all my comments so come back and take a look or subscribe to responses!

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)