When Hayley was a baby, I was totally against teaching her children sign language, I will admit. Being naive and not thinking it will work, I remember saying, “If I teach them sign, they will not speak”. Then I remember when Hayley was around two months old and sitting with my sister-in law who is a speech pathologist having the talk with her about whether she thought baby signing was effective. She said an astonishing, loud YES to me! She told me that she is a firm believer in sign, and told me that it actually did the opposite of making them speak later- it made them speak earlier!
So off I started at 2 months learning all the basic signs of signs. I read books and went to my #1 resource- Baby Signing Time! I am so thankful for the people behind baby signing time for giving me the resources, to start learning baby signing time and teaching it to my children. While recently they did provide me some of their newer DVDs to review, I would have wrote this post regardless. I absolutely love Baby signing time and their repoitore of DVDs, books, and Cds!
At around 3 months (when I finally knew a handful of signs), I started doing it with Hayley. For example, she was eating cereal, I would sign “cereal”, along with saying the word “cereal”. You should have saw me- I just signed and said different words all day long! At 5 months, Hayley learned her first sign of “more”. She then went on to know about 20 signs by the age of 1 and today, at age of 4, she knows over 100 signs. I am not saying this to brag at all, but I am just so proud of her for keeping her love for sign. Now, you might be asking, well- how did she speak? That is an easy answer- she said her first word at 11 months and was speaking in full sentences at 18 months of age. Her language was and still is unbelievable! I credit that to sign and her love of all the baby signing times videos!
With learning baby signing and using the Baby Signing Time products, I have witnessed so many less tantrums since they can actually communicate what they want! It also stimulates their early language, language skills, and helps to build a larger vocabulary. I also read that it will instill confidence in your little ones and I do see this!
When Zane was born, I also started him with the Baby Signing Time DVDs and flash cards. He did exactly what his sister did and by 18 months, he is speaking around 50 words. He is not speaking in sentences yet but he is pretty close! He also knows around 30 signs and uses them everyday. It is actually quite neat to see Hayley and Zane signing to each other with baby signing.
If you are interested in starting baby signing, I highly recommend you do! A FANTASTIC set of products to make it fun for your children to learn in an exciting and entertaining way, is by way of all the Baby Signing Time DVDs available on the market. They have a plethora of adorable DVDs that all incorporate your basic signs and go up to advanced signs based on what DVD you use. I truly think the Baby Signing Time DVDs might be either my first or second mom essentials when you have a baby! That is how much I love the Baby Signing Times DVDs!
Here is a video of Hayley signing at 5 months:
Have you tried baby signing? Did it work for you?
*I received DVDs for review purposes. As always, all my opinions are my own and not swayed by outside sources.
I wish i had known more about this when my boys were younger =] sounds like it made your life, and theirs, much easier!
I never did the signing thing. I’ve heard great stuff about it though.
How GREAT is this??!!!! Would’ve definitely taught my daughter! She is no 15 and is a great communicator and loves to learn other languages.
Yes, I’ve tried signing. We’ve learned “eat” and “more” but she hasn’t really been interested in learning “drink” or “please.” (she’s learned to say please already so that’s prob why she doesn’t want to sign it) It helps a lot since she can’t tell me she’s hungry with her words yet.
Oh I absolutely LOVE Baby Signing time! I love regular signing time as welL! We have a good collection of them that we bought over the years. I used them with my older boys (now age 8 and 7) and the results were amazing. For some reason I didn’t start early with my daughter and now i wish I had. She developed a speak delay so then I started to use baby Signing time with her. She absolutely LOVED them; and actually started to communicate with me. Her speech still is taking some time to come in; but at least we can communicate with her jabber (that I don’t understand) paired with a sign (which I do know). It’s amazing the difference it has done for our family; given my kids ways to express themselves and I just love them.
My daughter loved these when she was younger and still signs some things!
We did signing a little with my two youngest, and I loved it! Now, my youngest is in preschool and they’re still teaching him some things, and he comes home to show me. I think it’s a great way to communicate! Thanks for sharing!
My girls knew sign language as babies. It’s such a wonderful thing!!
I wasn’t sure about it either with my first child, but I did end up doing a bit of signing with him. It was neat to know that we were communicating with each other. This is timely as I am thinking of signing with my little girl. Thanks for the review!
How interesting! I had all intentions of signing with my girls, but just never really picked it up. Great to hear it worked for you though.
I haven’t signed with my kiddos. I need to just work on speaking more to my son. lol He seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to language. Not that he doesn’t hear Marlee and I talking to each other all day long…
I have always been interested in signing with babies! I used to do it with some of the kids I babysat and it took awhile to really understand their signs..! : )
I didn’t do it. I do have a book on it and my oldest grandson (8 at the time) was the one that picked up the book and started to teach himself. I think it’s a wonderful idea to start young with signing.
We love baby signing time! I taught myself some signs when I was younger and loved it. I got a Signing Time DVD from a friend and fell in love. Rachel is awesome! My kids have great language skills, we also speak Chinese with them, and I think the signing really helps! My son is 17 months, he knows tons of signs and has started saying words too. Communication is so much easier with signing babies!
We never felt the need to use it with Jude because he was very verbal very early. it is an interesting concept though.
Wow sounds interesting! I never knew anything like this existed for kids!
I do not have any kids, so I haven’t tried it, but this definitely sounds like something I would love for my child to try.
Music can be so helpful. Being one who suffers from depression, I know just how much listening to a song can cheer me up. I think it’s good to incorporate
We learned some sign language when we were young in church.. I think this is wonderful and it’s really a great thing for kids!