Baby Signing – is it a just trendy thing to teach your kids or is there any benefit? Is it worth the effort or are you wasting your time? Do you need to spend heaps of money on videos etc. or can you sign with your child without them?

I have chatted to a bunch of parents and a lot of them started for a bit with the signing and then just decided it wasn’t working and moved on, not realising it takes a while to ‘click’. Another reason is obviously that the child starts to talk anyway, so what’s the point?

I say it’s worth it!

We started our daughter out really early on using the first Baby Signing Time DVD, we just followed the recommendation on the packaging – 3 months or so. Only at about 12-13 months old did we really start to see the results of our and her effort. Now at 14 months she’s picking up words and signs at a rapid rate, so for us having to watch those videos over and over and over and over (and obviously working on using the signs in everyday life) is definitely paying off. Yaaay! I doubt I’d start quite that early if we had another child, but I have to say that even early on the videos were engaging for her and helped her understand what she was seeing around her – words you’d use everyday, like milk, eat/food, dog, etc. We added DVDs 2-4 to the repertoire, and now just choose one at random to keep it interesting for her and us.

Eventhough, she started to speak around the same time, and now knows quite a few words, she can actually ’say’ twice as much using signs as she would with speech alone. For example, she can’t wrap her tongue around a word such as ‘finished/all done’, but she can wave her hands around to show us she’s finished with her dinner. We understand her instantly and she doesn’t get frustrated waiting to come down from her high chair. She’s started saying ‘bed’ now when she’s tired, but before that she would make the sleep sign if she wanted to crash out – we’d understand and didn’t end up with an overtired child. Brilliant!

Some pros and cons, challenges, random observations etc:

• We started showing her the Baby Signing Time videos at 3 to 5 months, as I said, this being our first child what did we know about what she was going to take in? Definitely no signing was happening from her at that age or for a looong while, but maybe as we started so early it helped increase her understanding of things and helped put those words into her brain due to the repetition? Who knows? I’d suggest, though, that starting somewhere at maybe 6-8 months would be about right and it’s never too late to start :) It takes a while to kick in, so don’t give up – seems 11 to 13 months is about the time people really start to see the benefits, but starting before then gives then time to adsorb…

• We have a child who doesn’t like you to grab her hands and show her how to move her hands correctly, so we had to wait for her to start making the signs herself. You will find that your child can only approximate the signs at first, but just keep using the correct ones yourself and she’ll get it eventually as she gains better control over her hand movements. The whole point really, as far as I’m concerned, is that you understand what your child wants, is trying to say or show you, and she understands you, so if an approximate sign lets her show you what she wants, perfect, that’s all you need. If she has normal hearing it’s very unlikely she’s going to need it communicate long-term or chat to other kids in signs, so you do not need perfection.

• The Baby Signing Time range of videos, as I said, are extremely engaging, I have not come across an activity that can keep her attention that long, and the benefits outweigh any concern I had about her watching some TV. They are cutely illustrated, fun and cheerful. I personally believe there are also added benefits to the videos – increase in vocab, seeing other children and their expressions, seeing objects in context, etc. (one child they feature even picked up some of her unusually early reading from the videos). I’m sure there are other products and resources available on the internet, so jump on Google and check it out!

• You are definitely going to have fewer frustrated tantrums on your hands as you can understand more easily what she needs.
• It’s good fun both learning the signs together and chatting to your little one, and so rewarding when she suddenly understands and adds a new word to her vocabulary!

Now, if you can’t afford videos, I wouldn’t say they are essential to learning some communication by signing, they just make your progress a lot quicker. As I said before, your child just needs to communicate with you (and others close to her) really, so you can always make up your own signs. I didn’t have a clue what the sign for butterfly was, for example, so I just made one up and she’s been using it for months. The point is to understand each other!

The other option is to look up official sign languages on the internet, there are plenty of websites that demonstrate them. If you use signing based on an actual sign language, such as American Sign Language, you yourself have also picked up a useful communication skill (a small subsection, anyway) that may prove useful in communcating with hearing impaired children and adults too.

So all in all I think it is well worth it, if your child can say twice as much with signing than without it, why wouldn’t you at least give it a shot?

Enjoy fewer tantrums and have fun chatting :)