I’m Katherine from South Africa and I have a 10 month old beautiful little girl called Hope who has Down Syndrome. She is really working hard at her communication at the moment with trying to match word sounds so we have “hello”; “water…awter”; “dog…doh”; “dadda” and an occasional “bye” but she is not quite there yet and we think teaching her signing will be really good especially as we’ve learnt that Down Syndrome children learn a lot better by visual cues…does anyone know anything about Makaton signing and how I can go about teaching our little one some signing with flash cards? I’m a bit lost here on these forums so I hope I’m in the right place!
I’m from the US and do daycare for a 3 y/o girl with DS. I taught her most of the signs she uses and it has been very helpful. However, since using LR she has become a lot more verbal. We use American Sign Language. We focused on a few signs at first: more, help and all done. I signed to her all the time but we focus on those words. When we were finished eating I’d sign “all done”, same for when we’d go out to play and then come in. Basically anytime we were finished with something and starting something new. Then I’d take her hands and do the best we could to form the signs with her hands. Same for more: more reading, more food, more drink, more toys, etc. “Help” was the big one. She uses that sign frequently. At three she is signing probably 75 words or so. Even though she can say some of those words now, she will still sign. It took several months of signing before she responded with signs of her own. Be prepared to be patient.
There is a forum for parents with special needs, you might want to check out the posts there. I haven’t read through it, but I’m sure there are lot of great ideas.
Thanks Sonja, that sounds great, I will check out the special needs forum and I hadn’t thought of taking her hands to try show her the sign…good point …we’ll do that. I think in South Africa we use Makaton sign language so I will have to learn that but we are also using the “all done” sign and bottle/water; eat; milk; and bath time signs…we’ll have to go slow I think as she is not copying me hence I like the showing her how to do it after I have done it suggestion. She did say “hello dadda” to her dad this morning for the first time which was amazing so am very happy
