baby sign lanuage

About 5 months old. Am going to a session about it on friday, will get back to you, I have heard its great.

it is wonderfully wonderful.

We did not implement it but our daycare did about 6 months ago. first they started using it in the junior school and then taught the big kids int he over 2's to use it too and so they could understand thelittlies.

At first, when they started using it, ayja was at the one word, stage, i got a bit worried cos she'd use the sign insteadof the word. but once i started telling her she had to use both together, it was great.

We didn't use it too much ere but daycare uses it al the time with the words and all the kids there are great with it.

They started with easy to do signs for main thing slike drink, and please, and bikie and all that stuff. and have now added thing bit by bit like animals etc.. (hence the signing in ayja's video of her animal noises)

for a while there we were glad paris had learnt to cos ayja would come to us and sign something and ask for something but wasn't clear enough for us to understand.. so we'd ask paris what that sign meant and she'd tell us.     it's amazing how fast they pick up, provided you use it when you talk to them to. not all the time, just for the main stuff.

although.. i do have a problem with the please sign.. cos ayja looks so dam cute when she does it and goes "please?" while signing at the same time.. that and it involves a movement kinda like wiping her hands across her chest.. which is wonderful is she's eating and is asking for something else.. her clothes get nice smear marks on them. but at least she uses her sign.. lol

it is great and well worth it as long as you encourage them to use words with the sign or to try to use the words once they are old enough. it's not an alternative form of communication but meant to help understanding in the time between when they can't quite say things but understand them very well... which leads on to language later as long as you use the word with the sign too.

even now that Ayja's up to 8 word sentences.. she still uses her signing.   (he he yep 8 words.. the other day we got "no paris my book give it back me")

i think most maiun centres would hae someone who teaches.. or google it on the net i think it's called baby-sign, or babytalk sign language or something and look in the NZ pages and you should find places who run courses for it.

as for when it start using it. i spose you could start using it early on, but baby may not be able to actualy imitate the signs until they have some control over fine motor skills and can actually do the hand movements - so maybe around 1 yr old they would start doing it themselves i would guess? or earlier.. who knows.

Edited by mum2paris

I was always keen on trying htis for Haleigh, might look into it for James wouldve prob saved us alot of tantrums not knowing what Haleigh wanted

I got our stuff through baby-talk.co.nz. Found it incredil helpful when Ethan was little. Would definitely recommend. We has less tamtrums once he was able to get across what he wanted. When Ethan was going to daycare, I even got them to implement it there. They found it really useful too...

That would be great thanks Kelly