Signing with young ones

I love signing with children. I loved the idea of it before my children were born, and I love it even more when I started to see the impact on our family.

Sage and Zo both sign. They are learning ASL. We started to learn sign when Zo was an infant as a means to communicate with a pre-verbal child. We heard that children are physically able to sign before they can speak - and that signing makes communication possible at a younger age. We learned that signing does not discourage speech development, but encourages it.

All of these benefits rang true for us. Zo loved to communicate using sign. It was so exciting for us. And as an added bonus, being able to communicate at a younger age reduced Zo's frustration notably from her non-signing peers. She was able to communicate her needs and wishes from an early age, reducing tantrums.

We continued to sign because Zo loved it. While she naturally replaced much of her signing with speech, she finds enjoyment in learning ASL and often will ask "what is the sign for ________?" (Keeping a signing dictionary on your computer/bookshelf is handy!)

Sage started signing quite early, but only in the last 3 months has she been signing with very clear purpose to communicate a message. She is picking up signs all the time now. She doesn't have the dexterity to sign everything, but she tries and finds ways to modify them slightly so they work for her.

Zo still enjoys signing and continues to learn new signs at almost 4. Sign is also helping her to learn French - as we can easily communicate the meaning of a French word by signing while speaking.

With sign we could understand what our child was communicating for the most part. What signing doesn't help with is communicating why they can't have something they want - even though they told you and you understood it :) So, tantrums certainly happen still. But they are drastically reduced.

We love Baby SigningTime and SigningTime videos. While you could learn from a book or ASL dictionary, we have found these videos to be really creative and enjoyable to watch. They were lovingly created by a mom to help her family learn to sign to their daughter. There are 4 videos for babies (up to 2 years, though Zo still enjoys them). These teach basic signs - practical every day signs, emotion signs, environment signs, etc... There are two seasons worth of shows for older children that are fantastic.

Here is a video of Zo signing at 13 and 16 months...