Signing for Babies

[Nutjob]

I saw a very interesting item on the BBC Morning News this morning about teaching babies sign language, so that you can communicate with them before they can speak. It was facinating, although some child development experts suggested that doing this could hinder their speech development. I would be interested to hear your views on this, and has anyone put this into practice or know of anyone who has, successfully?

DS2 learnt some signs but only because one of DS1s friends is profoundly deaf. He knows the signs for milk, biscuit, juice & hungry (and pig oddly enough) - what more can a toddler want? I didn't teach him these until he was over 1 (um, 15 months maybe?)

I can't say if it delayed his speech as he's a second child with a very very talkative older brother I think the key is to always use the spoken word as well as the sign so they hear both. eg DS2 says juice and does the sign now (same for the other signs too). I think it can help you understand what they're saying when they're really not terribly clear.

It doesn't delay speech- in fact if children are slow to speak they are sometimes taught makaton - a sign language. Interested in who the so called experts were because according to the research signing actually encourages speech and language development.

I've got a colleague who successfully uses baby signing, so I'm interested in giving it a go. There's some more information at the Sing and sign website, although by the time dd is old enough to go to the groups, I'll be back at work!

They do signing at my DS nursery - have done for years. It's a well known chain. They only do a few - Milk, More, Hungry etc.

It's good but to be honest I think the nursery nurses are so busy they don't really have time to do it all the time like they're supposed to.

That information appeared in Sunday's observer in an article.apparently there is a speech pathologist/therapist who is doing presentations throughout the UK. We have been encouraged to use makaton with our daughter who is 7 months old.

Message withdrawn

We had every intention of signing with DS (now 19 months) and got the book six months before he was born. Somehow, we never got rond to it, even though he still doesn't talk now and would probably pick it up quite quickly. I might try him with a few easy ones this afternoon.

I'm not sure about these theories saying it slows their speech. As I said DS doesn't talk now (only about 5 words) Does that mean if we had of taught him to sign that would be the 'excuse' why he doesn't talk? The same thing happened with the baby walker, he was very late putting his legs down long before the baby walker arrived. If we'd of bought it earlier it would have been put down to that.

I personally think it is a great idea, it's saves a lot of frustration to all concerned - becareful also to teach Granny and Grandad abit so they know whats going on too.

Here are some websites, I won't do links as I think it gets tricky if you try and do more than one.

www.geocities.com/signingbabes/signingbabes.html

www.signwithme.com/default.asp

www.sign2me.com/

www.signingbaby.com/

Good luck - Let us know how you get on.