Carlene and I have been talking a lot about this subject lately, and she keeps saying, "If I were still blogging, I would write a blog about this, because this is the greatest thing ever!" Or something like that, anyway. So I thought I would do it for her. What's she so excited about? Sign language, of course!
Before Carlene and I had a baby, we talked about doing the whole baby sign language thing. Once the baby came, we waited until she was 9 months old or so to start. We went to the library and got some books and videos on teaching your baby to sign. Most of the books and videos used methods that contradicted one another, and the signs for the same word were different from one book or video to the next. So we picked the book that made the most sense and decided to use some good ideas from that, and the rest we kind of made up as we went.
That was all less than two months ago. Contrary to what many of the books said, we didn't just start with three or four signs and wait until she learned those before teaching her more. We decided to show her the sign for pretty much anything that caught her attention. That's probably why her first two signs were "Milk" and "Airplane". Before long, we were throwing more signs at her than we even realized.
Tonight I made up a spreadsheet to keep track of all the signs Carlene and I know, which ones we are teaching Charity, which ones she's making attempts at performing, and which ones she really knows. Carlene and I were pretty stunned to realize that we currently both know, and show Charity, about 100 different signs. That covers everything from obvious objects or people like "Mommy" to somwhat hard-to-grasp concepts like "Where".
Even to me, 100 signs sounds like an awful lot. Were I to follow the methodology laid out in most of the books, I would have figured that her poor, underdeveloped baby brain would be overwhelmed and unable to cope with it all. Is that the case? Not even close! After less than two months of signing, Charity is able to perform about 25 signs. For an 11 month old baby, I'd say that's pretty darned impressive. The greatest thing is that she is constantly looking to us to show her more signs!
It's been a really amazing experience to teach sign language to our baby, and it's one I cannot recommend highly enough. I used to think that there wasn't all that much going on inside those little baby heads. Boy was I ever wrong. She's a signing machine, and she's recently started using signs, not just to identify things and ask for stuff, but to learn more. Last week she started putting signs together. Now she'll ask things like "Where's Mommy?" Or "Where's the book?" Granted, most of her questions involve asking where things are, but it shows how much she's able to communicate. Carlene called me at work today to say that Charity had asked, using her adorable signs, "Where's Daddy?" After spending a four day weekend together, Charity wanted to know why Daddy wasn't there to play with her today. Wow, the feeling that gave me cannot be described. It was pretty special. And it wouldn't have been possible without sign language.
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Bran! I love this post (have you made any post that I haven't said the same thing about??) I can't wait to see Charity again and see all of her new signs. It really is SO amazing, isn't it? She's one smart cookie. I love that you made a spreadsheet to keep track of them. I totally did the same with Evan. Ha ha! It's fun to see on "paper" what such a little child can do. If you have 44 minutes sometime, you should totally watch this. It's fascinating. It has its people who argue against it but you can't argue with the fact that young kids are so much more capable than we give them credit for. There is a lot going on in those little brains. Go, Charity!! :-)
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Susie and I have thought about doing this when we have kids now that you guys have brought the idea up to us. It sounds like it's really helpful.
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