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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
BR: Sign language
Did you teach your little one sign language? If so what age? Also where do I start if I want to teach DD? I never really thought about it, then a little girl in our waterbabies class was signing "milk" to her mom, and I thought it was so cute!! Thanks for any help/advice!
Re: BR: Sign language
We do it. Zoey can sign milk, more, please, thank-you, eat, and drink. We did it off and on from about 6-8 mos and got serious about it at 8 mos. It is kind of hard to remember to do it when you're not used to it.
We started with more and milk. I would give her a little food at meals and when it was gone I would say and sign "more" then give her more food. It didn't take her long to pick up on it. Same concept with milk.
Our daycare actually taught her please. I think it helped that she was seeing sign routinely at home and daycare.
I think the main thing is to speak the word and sign it. Otherwise, your child might not use spoken language. I'd encourage you to try it. I think it has saved us some meltdowns since she can tell us exactly what she wants.
I started working with G on it around 5 months. I wasn't good at being super consistent though so she never really caught on (and she tends to like to do whatever she wants :-) ) Just now (at 9 months) she signs all done.
I'd like to work more on eat, drink and more. I think consistency is key (which I'm not super good at)
I've taught both girls. In addition to it being very helpful, they really enjoy it. We started at 6 mos. I use online animated dictionaries so I know I'm doing it right. After the age of 1 my girls also get 1/2 hour of signing time DVD's which they loooove.
Here is a blog post on how we teach it:
http://raisinglittlepickle.blogspot.com/2009/06/18-mos-look-back-at-signing.html
Yep, we started basic signing with Neena when she was around 6 months. She was able to sign milk to us by 10 months.
My DH's aunt is a sign language interpteter and she gave us some wonderful resources that we started with. There are some great baby signing board books at the local libraries. We also took a 4 week baby sign language class at the Clive Library. The key is to be consistent and persistent with the it. Neena is 14 months and knows 10-12 signs. I've heard that they really start grasping it around 15 months. I'm so glad we stuck with it because it's so nice that she can tell me what she wants or needs.
Neena Mae. 1/7/10
"A baby nursing at a mother's breast is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature." - David Suzuki
Prepare for a soap box moment.
We purposefully avoided programs that taught sign language (which seems to be all the rage every where I turn).
I totally get it - babies are sponges and can learn anything. But I want my child to learn American English first. I want him to SAY milk first. I want him to SAY more first. We encouraged his verbal skills and then once he mastered words - he learned the sign for certain words.
Today he speaks in sentences and signs for simple things but generally SAYS the word as he is signing.
This is kind of like all these my baby can read, who needs phonics programs which are pushing kids into speech therapy or being behind in their ability to truly learn the structure of words instead of memorization skills. Kids are in speech therapy because they learned to sign for what they wanted - so why learn to speak?
Anyway - it is cute, it is amazing, and by no means am I saying we shouldn't give our children new worlds to function/communicate in but first things are first IMO.