I was told that if your baby gets to comunicate throught signing then he will not make an effort to speak. Anyone had experience this or you taught him signs and he spoke normally?
Also I want to know if there is any difference in the signs among people speaking different languages. Are the sign “language dependant”?
I appreciate your coments
I had heard that too, but we went ahead and taught signing to our baby since she was 5 months. She started signing around 9 months and once she could pronounce the word she dropped the sign. Right now she uses her signs very seldom, when she is around people and is being shy. She would sign thank you, please or sorry instead of the word. It was great to be able to communicate with her when she was little. Definetely if we have another baby, we will be teaching him signing.
I don’t think is language dependant. We used to sign and use the word in both English and Spanish.
Hope this helps!
I have spent some time thinking about signing with babies lately. I did a lot of signing with my 6th child. She is 3 years old now. I actually wrote a blog post about whether or not parents should bother teaching their babies sign language. You can see it here http://teachingbabytoread.com/2010/06/02/should-babies-learn-sign-language-maybe-not.aspx.
Signing is usually just a phase in our babies lives. They drop it when they begin to speak. The only sign we use regularly in our house now is I love you. My children sign that to me at least 3 times a day. 
My daughter started signing since she was 11 months old…now she is 28 months old and she still signs also she speaks english an spanish…she makes sentences of 5 words at least togheter, people will tell me DON’T SIGN TO HER…because she won’t speak!! This wasn’t her case,I think is very important to sign and say the word at the same time, the signing is just reinforcing the word!! Like I said before she is very fluent in both language and also has a 15 words vocabulary in chinese. Sometimes she will say something we can’t understand(or doesn’t make sense to us) and I will ask her to sign it…I can’t imagine our lives without signing!!! It will be harder to undertand her and probably frustrating for her.
She loves spelling words by signing…like cat,dog, hat,love,cow,milk ( short words)…she knows her abcs in sign language so it makes it easier. when she reads a book she likes to spell the words and sign the letter as well.
In conclusion from our personal experince Signing to her has opened a new world for us as a family!!
We have being asked several times whenever we take her out, people saying how old is she?three or four? we said she just turn two!! and they will say but how come she looks so bigger and independent and once she starts speaking in both language and signing PEOPLE GETS INCREDIBLE AMAZED. And we get comments from friends and people like " I wish my daughter or my son could learned that" I said why you don’t teach them???easy as that!! You teach in the right way they will learn. It is nothing special about her maybe she just had the chance to be tought!
i only used a few simple signs with my daughter which she stop as soon as she could talk
thought about doing more signing with my 5 month old but after researching it
i think we will use doman’s choice board instead
I have heard that it delays speech, but I have read the exact opposite. I started exposing my son to sign language at 9 months and he has a phenomenal vocabulary. He started speaking early and he continues to pick up language quickly. I would highly recommend signing! HIGHLY! As Krista stated, it seems to be a phase, though. My son still signs “please” without even thinking as he says the word, but that’s pretty much the only sign he still uses.
Our speech path told us that signing was like crawling. They use to to get around until there legs and balance can support them to walk. Once they learn how to walk they discover that it is a better way to get around and rarely resort back to crawling. AS LONG as you are signing AND saying the word. And from what we read on how important crawling is to a childs brain development from Glenn Doman, I wonder how much Signing can help a youngsters brain development…
I did not thought of it that way and think you are right. Maybe it takes the stress trying to comunicate and not being able of saying the word but the can sign what they want and get to comunicate.
Good thinking waterdreamer.
Karma to you for that way of seeing it.
Krista, Congrats and karma for your blog, very nice for you to share your experience that way. With a little more time maybe I will start mine in spanish.
what I like also about signing is that when start speaking or get older it is like a SECRET LANGUAGE that you share with your son or grandson as is my case.
PY you should be very proud of her and of yourself as a parent. It shows that you are doing an excellent work. I agre.e in that it is a new workd as a family and promotes better comunication at an early age.
Karma to you
I agree, Signing is like a secret language. We still use it when we are having family time and the kids are supposed to be sitting quietly. They will sign that they have to go potty or are hungry or what not. I used to joke with my mom and tell her I wanted to learn enough sign language so I could “yell” at the kids without using my voice. I do use the stop now sign a lot with the kids and we like to sing and sign the alphabet and make signs as we read simple stories. I think signing is a ton of fun and it is so easy to learn. I don’t think it causes speech delays. There are some children that are lazy to speak. The parents will give them what they want without them having to say anything. They just point and get. Signing does require effort so once a child can speak it is much easier to ask for something than to make a sign for it. It is also great if you are teaching more than one language because as you say the word in the new language you can sign it.
Just the opposite. My daughter started talking very early. Now at 5 she asks to go to Chines and Spanish class to learn even more. Check out. http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-teach-your-baby-sign-language
Sign language does not lead to speech delays. We used it with both of our children, and while both were late talkers they were still in the normal range. Check out the Signing Time website. www.signingtime.com They have lots of information about baby signing.
DebbieMazz,
Welcome to this forum, I see this is your first post. Yes, I am now convince that Baby Signing Time is the way to go with your baby. I learn about the baby signing when my only grandson (for whom I am in this forum learning so marvelous things) was is a little bit too big.
He is 3.5 years and speaks really bad in our native language so i am forbidden to mention any foreign language at his presence. I guess I will have to wait for him to speak clearly in spanish before i continue with Muzzy (we where using english and french, it is from BBC).
Nevertheless I will definitely recomend Baby Signing and am sorry did not knew about it before.
How are you working Spanish and Chinese. Do you have someone speaking to her?
We signed with our 2 dd’s & it was a huge benefit. It gave them the opportunity to communicate before they were able to verbally. I’m sure it increased their vocabulary & it definately cut down on temper tantrums. I researched extensively & studies that I read supported sign language as a way to help kids speak sooner. My older dd has always been very advanced in speech, & my youngest who has Down syndrome is speaking in short sentances & starting to give up signing already, her vocabulary is quite large- she is very advanced for a child with DS & her speech therapist is amazed at her progress.
I was also told that signing would delay speech development but all the research I did and speaking to other parents who taught their children to sign pointed to the opposite.
I think it’s just the usual reaction from people who haven’t done any research or have any experience to think that it will be harmful. It’s the same discussion you hear about baby wearing. That the child won’t walk if you wear them everywhere and that you’re “making a rod for your own back” and again the research just doesn’t back it up. Most babies who are worn have much better muscle development and walk earlier than those who are not.
I guess anything that is outside somebodies sphere of experience is looked at as suspect or harmful.
NO WAY. Helps them talk sooner actually. They learn how great it is to communicate. My daughter was way advanced after we taught her sign language. http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-teach-your-baby-sign-language
Thank you all for sharing your experience. I definitely think that teaching SIGN language is the way to go.
Btw DebbieMazz what a nice blog you have, cute photos and valuable information.Karma to you for such a nice work.
Agree with LizzyBee - I taught my son to sign and he was an early speaker. Many people were surprised by what he could say at his age. He was stringing sentences together well before the average age and now he’s a very articulate 3.5yo. Many friends and relatives who heard that I was teaching him to sign always asked, “Won’t that delay his speech development?” It was a common question and it always came from people who didn’t know anything about sign language or teaching children.
I think the common assumption is that if a child can communicate through sign language, they won’t bother to learn how to speak. They don’t realise that children want to learn and they are picking up things from their environment all the time. The only way you could stop them from learning to speak is to make sure they never hear anyone speak.
Yes, babies and kids are amazing. My grandson never stops surprising me. At 2 yrs old when he wanted to tell me something about an owl (“buho” in spanish) i could not understand so he told me POEO which i think is the Hawaian word for owl. We use to watch a video I brought from a visit to Honolulu and learn some songs and hawaian words. He always make himself understand using synonyms or by other forms. They are incredible.