thanks Kiwimum for the inspiration 
We taught our little one a few different signs when she was younger, and it took a while for her to pick up, but eventually she did them.
Great video.
Initially, I was worried about teaching sign to my daughter (T21), but it has only increased her verbal language. If she learns the sign to a new word she works on speaking it. She is a very visual learner - that is part of the reason why LR has been great for her.
cinny
At 18 months I posted that my daughter was having a verbal explosion and new word were just flying out of her mouth each day. It was a mixture of signs and words. Now at 20 months old she is still signing a lot and talking and reading!!.
The other night while I was putting her to bed she pretty much read the first two pages of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by herself. She did find the little words hard eg “of, the, and” but said the bigger words beautifully. So the next morning I tried to capture the magic again on video (see the link below) but her voice is very quiet and a bit hard to hear, but you can still see her signing words eg warm, egg, caterpillar etc.
My challenge now is to keep the signing going and not let its completely drop off and be forgotten. I want to keep teaching her to finger spell the alphabet, I want to keep introducing New Zealand Sign Language into her tool box as a second language and I will keep trying to sign while reading books and I will keep posting here and let you know how we are getting on.
Thanks kiwimum.
Very interesting. My son is 18 months and I signed to him since he was born. Now he is talking and I always wonder when should I stop sign to him. It’s very nice to read about your experience.
I mean, your experience makes me feel more comfortable on keep signing 8)
mario- I’m glad you have found my posts interesting/helpful. If I was you I wouldn’t stop signing, why stop?
As long as you are still talking while signing I think it can only be a positive experience for language development. Its just keeping up the desire to look up new useful sign and add them to your childs day that is the hard bit (that not even that hard, is it?)
I love that I can communicate to my daughter in a noisy room or at the swimming pool for example. All I need is her eye contact from across the room and with my hands I can ask her all kind of questions
“do you need the toilet?” “walk, dont run” “I’m watching you” “where is your sun hat?” “say please” “I love you” the list goes on. This will be helpful for years to come.
Its also really good when she is trying to tell me something but for the life of me I just cant work out what she is trying to verbally say. I just ask her to use some sign and she will then add sign to her verbal sentence and with those extra clues I am able to understand when she was wanting to tell me and then I can communicate back appropriately. If signing wasnt in our life during these moment I could see how a toddler would get frustrated and have tantrums from not being understood. Chloe hardly ever has a toddler tantrum and I have sign language to thank for that.
Recently we have been having a but of success with finger spell the alphabet, together we can almost get from A-P finger spelling. I mostly refer to the letters by their letter sounds as this is more helpful for her vocabulary also. I’m also encouraging her to learn to use her fingers to count to ten.
There is just so much you can do, its endless.
That’s great to hear kiwimun. How is your experience with negative opinions? Do you have people in you family against the way you communicate with your child?
I have had more than a few negative opinions given to me, a few have really shocked me. It amazes me how strong peoples opinions can be on topics they actually don’t really know anything about.
Early on before I knew for myself that SL was going to actually work, the negative opinions did make me doubt my decision and made me feel like maybe I could be doing more harm than good.
I didn’t know anyone personally who had tried baby sign language so I did feel quite alone and vulnerable at times (I’m so glad I found this forum to ask questions and share success stories with).
I also think that maybe some felt a bit of guilt that they never did this with their child or maybe they just actually didnt care, I dont know.
For awhile there I wanted to spread the word about Baby Sign Language by running parent night classes but the thought of having to defend off negative comment and opinions just make me feel tired and frustrated. Maybe I might think about doing workshops again in the future maybe not. But I know when number two child comes along, I will start signing from birth and I will be more confident in my journey. I’m looking forward to it.
This is amazing kiwimum
As you can see in my signature, I have a Brazilian website for Baby Signing. The woman in the video is my wife.
At first I was unsure about signing in public. But now I’m not since I speak to my son in foreign language, signing seems to be an easy thing to do and I really don’t mind.
From my family I have only few people against it. There was some people against it in the school my son was attending last year.
I also have this feeling you said. Some people may be against because they didn’t do this. I think everyone who is a father or mother doesn’t want to see himsel/herself as bad parent and thus, if someone comes with something new or something they didn’t want to try, they take a counter-side.
This is my recent video of Chloe reading words at 21m. She is now saying a lot of words but still like to use sign to help her be understood.
This morning over breakfast I was able to get some photos of Chloe finger spelling the New Zealand Sign Language Alphabet while watching Preschool Prep DVD. She loves that DVD at the moment. It all about the letter sound rather than the letter names. Each letter has a face and kind of a personality I guess. I think its a great DVD to help teach finger spelling.
Gorgeous photos of a gorgeous girl. Well done on continuing with sign. I still use it with my 3 year old when we do French.
We now watch YBCR and signing helps my son a lot. He signs to show he understood what was said.
Nice pictures, we did quite a bit of signing, even when they began speaking it still helped a great deal to convey what he was wanting.
We sign with my 22 month old and he actually knows more signs than me. He watches baby signing time, but the surprise signs are from signing iPad apps. If he knows the word, he usually signs at the same time he speaks it.
Now I’m thinking that almost two months ago I was thinking about stop signing to my DS. Thank you kiwimum and lalla for your advices. Now I’m more than happy to use signs with my son. I actually use it even with my wife when she is far. ASL is an important part of what my son is today and he loves it. Even when he says the word, he likes to sign.
My toddler is now 1 year and 3 months old. She can speak a lot of words now and is very communicative. Do I need to continue giving her sign language lessons? I started giving her some sign language lessons when she was 6 months old. She used to sign for milk back then which my husband and I really found helpful. Our daily lessons now consist of LR, manual flashcards for reading and math, Little Musician, and I am slowly incorporating what I’ve learned in Tweedlewink Overview online training into our daily routine. However, I find myself press for time because I am a working mom.
M-rogue23,
I wouldn’t stop if I was you. When my daughter hit 14 months there seemed to be a signing explosion going on. She wanted to know the sign for everything and anything and was picking it all up really fast.I think I only had to show her two or three times and she knew the sign. It made it really exciting and interesting when she started putting two signs together and even three signs together to get her message across. Keep going with it but take the pressure off yourself and just keep signing in everyday situations rather than set lessons. Make it just a natural part of your conversation, make up signs on the spot if something new is of interest to your child. My girl just turned two and I havnt introduced a new sign to her for a few months but we still sign with the signs we already know. It kind of just a habit now.
keep going your doing a good job
I got very interested. Already tried today - all kids are interested, 4yr old as well
But call me crazy - I’m treaching them ASL though I’m from Poland. Simply because many sign words are shown online for free…
I tought them 5 words ca, theid dad too. Tomorrow next ones. I love it!