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| The sign for Signing |
Some of you may or may not know we have been teaching Robbie "baby" sign language. Kelly had a number of signs already under her belt before she was even pregnant with Robbie; I, on the other hand, had to learn from scratch. There are many benefits of teaching a "hearing" child sign language, a big one is reducing the severity of the terrible twos. This is done by allowing a child to communicate what they want before they have a developed verbal language.
Over the summer Kelly was able to go to a baby sign language class offered at the library. We also bought a baby signs book to help us in the process of teaching Robbie, and ourselves. The websites available for signing have really helped me learn a number of signs. I had to count up the number of signs that I know and when I did I didn't realize just how many I knew, I counted over 80 signs that I have learned over the past year, Kelly knows even more than that. I suppose that sounds like a lot until you think about the number of words we use on a daily basis. I found out that there are more than 180,000 words in the English language. Although there aren't nearly that many signs for words, it does kind of put it into perspective. A quick search shows there are about 500 commonly used signs. The signs Kelly and I are learning are the ones that would helpful for Robbie to learn and to sign back, like the foods he is eating, if he's hungry, thirsty, tired, wants to play, and of course the sign for "more".
We first started signing with Robbie when he was about five months old. Now they don't usually start signing back until at least nine months of age, but the sooner we start the sooner he can relate that we are communicating with him both verbally and with our hands. When you do signs with children (hearing or not) you speak the word as well, that way the hearing children understand that the word you are speaking and the motion of your hands mean the same thing. His first breakthrough was signing "daddy" at seven months while we were on vacation. It only lasted a day or two, but it was enough to encourage us that he was responding and understanding what we were trying to do.
His first real sign was "change" and I want to say he was about 11 months old. However the typical thing is that they start singing one sign for everything, which Robbie did, he rarely actually wanted to diaper change when he signed it. He signed that for a week or two, but then stopped signing again until around 13 months. That's when he started signing "more" and he had a clear understanding of what he was saying. He also learned during that time that shaking his head meant "no", which was actually quite helpful for us to know what he did and did not want. He did and still does make a distinctive noise for "yes"; almost sounds like "uh-huh".
The reason for the stopping and starting in Robbie's attempts to sign is really because we stopped and started with him as well. If you sign all the time while talking, the child will pick up the information quicker than if you only sign while talking to the child or only infrequently sign to the child. Parents also have to be very watchful of the signs because they usually don't do them right initially, and you have to try to interpret them. This does not mean you should change the sign to match what the child is doing. Instead, you should continue to do the sign correctly back at the child. The child will eventually mimic you and do the sign correctly. Until then, the child might make up their own signs for you to try and figure out. What makes it even harder is not knowing all the time when he's actually signing, or if he's just waving his arms around playing.
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| Sign for Hurt |
Over the past week Robbie's had what we have called a signing explosion. This is fairly common for kids to all the sudden start doing many different signs at his age. He went from signing a couple signs to signing lots of signs like "all done", "cat", "cheese", "thank you", "dog", "music", "apple", and a few more as well. What has been great about it is when we ask him to sign something he has been trying to imitate us, some of the time. He has been using the sign "hurt" a lot, we think he means something else although we haven't been able to figure it out, but hurt is what he is actually signing.
As of right now Robbie has not used any verbal language, other than the occasional dada or mama, but that is not unusual for boys at his age. We're very happy with Robbie's progress and believe that over the next month the number of signs he signs back will continue to grow. Hopefully his verbal skills will come along soon as well. He will eventually stop using signs in favor of verbal language but we will enjoy communicating with him in whichever form he chooses.
