I first came across the concept and practice of signing with infants when I was doing my pre pregnancy research on how to best achieve a better and healthier birth. Once we were pregnant with our first child, a son, I came across the information again and even watched a few videos of a mother signing with her fifteen month old daughter. The idea is that parents start using sign language with their infants for basic words e.g. “milk,” “all done,” “diaper,” so that the infant can communicate basic needs and wants before he or she is verbal. This not only prevents frustration of both parent and baby, but also aids the child in his or her verbal skill as these skills develop. By the time our son was born, I knew that we were going to start using sign language with him. I found several resources online that provided an animated examples of numerous words; I simply entered the word I wanted to learn the sign and the site brought up the images for that word. With all these resources at my disposal (I also bought a book on signing with a baby), we felt prepared to start signing with our son. We started introducing signs when our son was about five months old. Initially we did not get much of a response from our son, but as we continued to use the same signs over and over again, we could tell that he recognized them and understood what they meant, even though he was not reciprocating the signs. We continued to sign with him and introduced new signs every week or so. We were started to get a little discouraged after five months of signing with him. Finally when he was about ten months old he signed “milk” back to me when he was nursing! It was a very excited moment for my husband and I!
(To be continued …)