Did you know sign language before teaching your baby or did you learn along with your baby? What age did you start? What age did they start signing back? Would you recommend it? Do you think it helped your baby? Did they speak later than normal? Did you see less tantrums? What products can you recommend? Did you teach American Sign Language or did you teach a "baby" form of sign language that has some different signs than ASL? Thanks.
I was talking to a woman who uses sign language as her first language and she said that she was looking through a baby sign language book that didn't follow ASL exactly and used some of their own signs to make words easier for babies to sign. And she said that some of the signs that they created for words were actually offensive words in ASL.
2 comments… read them below or add one
I have been teaching my daughter sign language (ASL, not the dumb baby stuff, some of them seem harder). I did it very lazily for about a month, just using signs like more, eat, milk, drink. Then, just before she turned 9 months old, she signed "more". I was so excited, I really didn't think it would work! lol. She has only been doing signs for a couple of weeks and is picking them up like crazy. She can say "milk", "gentle", "mommy", "daddy", and has attempted eat and drink, though it lacks her confidence still. I have noticed she always "yells" at me to get her attention before she does a sign, and I always say the word to her as she signs, and when I do the signs. She talks too, and can say mommy, daddy, baby, puppy, bye-bye, and "ny-ny" (her word for nursing). So I don't think it is detrimental to her verbal language development.
For a faster way, buy my First fifty Sight Words in Sign, found on my web site.