...if no one in your family is deaf? I know this is an increasingly common practice in families where there is no one with hearing impairmnent.
Besides the obvious benefit of being able to communicate in a different way, what are some other reasons people do it?
If you practice this with your own baby, could you please tell me a little about the learning process, for both you and baby?
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I like what Jill P. had to say. I used it with both of my kids. One I started a little later because her speech was already delayed and we wanted to curb tantrums when she couldn't communicate what she wanted. The other one we taught from birth. By 5 months old she could do the sign for "milk". By the time she was 7 months old she had a total of 5 words she could sign. It did not delay her speech in anyway. In fact, she was an early talker. The key to the whole thing with a hearing child is to use both signs and spoken words when you are speaking with the child. That way they are learning both. As they get older and start to try and say the words, encourage that as much as possible. When my little one first started trying to talk, she also still used the signs. So if she signed "more milk please", I'd actually speak it "You want more milk? Okay I can give you more milk." Soon she was saying "more milk" as she signed it and not long after she was dropping the signs. She's 2 now and it's rare when she uses baby signs because she is so verbal.
For me what worked was to teach 1-3 new words at a time. Once they could recognize them and respond to them and even sign them, we worked at adding a few more. I did it this way mostly for me because I have a hard time remembering new things and wanted to really get them ingrained in my mind before moving on to new signs.
The reason I taught my girls……1)to communicate with the oldest as a toddler because she was speech delayed and having tantrums over us not understanding what she wanted throughout the day and 2) with the youngest to help her communicate much earlier so we didn't go through that again.