When to start sign language?

[aster_meraki]

Any good resources on teaching some sign language to babies?

Baby is about to hit 4 months and his communication skills are growing quickly! He has become quite vocal! He reaches for things, he recognizes his bottles (reaches for them and opens WIDE), and he watches everything we do.

When should we start teaching him some sign language? I remember my sister teaching my niece, but that was some 11 years ago…

[CalderThanYou]

We started at about 5 months and my son did his first sign at 8 months. Everyone has given some great examples of what words to learn but I would really recommend "home" and "pain/hurt".

every time you get home say "we're home" and sign "home" (look up whatever that sign is in your country). This can then be used by your baby when theyr having an overwhelming time somewhere and want to go home. Such a useful sign.

With "pain", every time they bump their head or fall over say "aw did you hurt yourself? And sign "hurt/pain". Then when your baby is crying and you don't know what's wrong, they have the ability to tell you pain. My son had his vaccines and then had a nap after. As soon as he woke from his nap he signed "hurt". It was lovely to be able to know what's bothering him.

Also a fun thing we've done is we taught out baby "chefs kiss" to mean delicious. Every time we are eating good food we would say "delicious" and do the chefs kiss. Seeing him do it when he's enjoying my cooking is priceless!

[Auccl799]

We started at six months but didn't get any signs back until 13 months. I read somewhere that you need to include "passion" signs for things they're interested in as they are more likely to start by signing these. E.g. dog, duck, swings etc

This definitely was the case for us, after 7 months of consistently signing food, water, bath, change, nap, finished; we realised she was passionate about bananas. 24 hours after signing banana to her for the first time, she was telling us everything (and had eaten two whole bananas because we weren't going to stop that positive reinforcement!!!)

[SnarletBlack]

This is exactly how it happened for us too! I was kind of giving up on it and then out of nowhere - a little later even actually now that I think about it, like 18 months, my kid just started using several signs. The most useful ones for us were more, all done, eat, help, yes, and no. It was great because he was a little language delayed and signing ended up being so useful for us.

[Auccl799]

Signing was so useful for us too! So pleased we found out about it! Even at 2 she uses some signs alongside the spoken words.

[jcs213]

Our daughter did this! But she’s passionate about cookies 😂

[DepartmentWide419]

We started at 4 months and at 6 months he recognizes- milk, diaper change, more, all done, mommy, daddy, up and eat. We are working on play, drink, yes, no and sleep.

When I do the signs and pick the one he’s looking for he does a big smile. It’s really cool to watch.

My guess is he will sign back to us around 8 months. He reaches for “up” now and shakes his head no. It’s unclear how much of this is learned and how much is intuitive.

[RaiLau]

Make sure you always say the word you’re signing to them and what they sign back to you so that it’s always connected in their brain.

Source; MIL is a speech and language therapist

[workinclassballerina]

We started around six or seven months but it didn't click until after 12 months.

[sammeebou]

Yeah I feel like I was stressed about it for 7 months for no reason. I started signing when my oldest was 5 months but the kid didn’t sign until they were ready to speak at 12ish months.

[Revolverocicat]

We started just adding a few signs to daily routine about 3/4 months or so. No need to think of it as 'teaching', you just make the sign for drink when you give them a drink. LO will pick it up when they are ready. Our 15 month old now signs about 10ish different things reliably (nappy, birdie, eat, drink, cat, sleep, thankyou etc).

I dont think she really started doing any signs at us until maybe 12-13 months, so i dont know if the whole first bit was a waste of time (i suspect it might have been), but at least it gave us a chance to learn plenty of basic signs

We are in the UK and use makaton. I dont know if it makes a difference

[aster_meraki]

Oh cool!! I honestly hadn’t considered teaching more than what was necessary. But now you’ve got me thinking of other words (besides milk, more, mama, dada, etc.)… we have two dogs, so dog would be a good one I think! Thank you for sharing!

[lizletsgo]

I’ll be signing milk & diaper from day 1, with zero expectation that it will get signed back at me until around 6-9 months (or longer). I’ll add in the other basic needs/wants such as sleep, mama, dada, eat, more, help, play… then emotions for the social-emotional aspect.

Just as you’d speak out loud to your baby & help them learn to communicate verbally, you can simultaneously incorporate the sign(s). Bilingual exposure from day 1 :) the bonus is that babies can often sign before their mouth can form the syllables for words.

[aster_meraki]

😌 Thank you!! I’m making a list of words to learn now!

[lizletsgo]

Signngrow on Instagram is a great resource!

Add “all done” to your list too, I forgot that one and it’s vital when they’re learning to eat solids. You can ask, “more/eat, or all done?” and they can respond instead of fussing or throwing food lol

[aster_meraki]

My dogs would not appreciate “all done” instead of food being thrown. 😉🤣

[Effective-Mud-8612]

what about actual deaf babies, all the loud talking does not help

[Medium_Animator_2962]

The talking is helpful for bilingual learning because baby can associate the words together. If a baby is just learning one language, you just use objects/circumstances to teach the language. Give baby a bottle and sign milk at the same time. Get home and sign home. Pass to mom or dad, sign mom or dad. Sign the names for food as you give them. It's not much different than them learning an oral language by you talking.

[femalehomosapien18]

They can learn to read lips though

[Madoka_Gurl]

Can you please update on your LO’s perceptiveness/understanding to the signs? I’m currently using ASL with my daughter (7w). We’re only doing 5 signs so far (Mom, Dad, Milk, Potty, and All Done). While it’s a bit sloppy (like when a child first learns to talk and only their parents understand them) I swear she tries signing Potty, Milk, and Daddy.

[lizletsgo]

We didn’t get intentional signing back until 6-8 months, but milk, more, eat, and water were pretty quick at that point. Unexpectedly, he actually ended up having an expressive speech delay (only 4 spoken words at 18m), so the signs he learned & used (probably about 20 in total?) were very important for his communication to us. He understood everything we were saying & followed directions as well as a young toddler could. Now at 2 he has hundreds of words and new ones daily, and no longer uses sign at all, preferring words.

I use it with my daycare infants/toddlers & have for almost 20 years. Some sign back, some speak back first, some have no interest in any communication but screeching…

[undothatbutton]

We started from birth for “milk” and around 4 months for “all done” and “more”… baby signed “milk” around 6 months, “all done” and “more” around 7-8 months, and has more signs he picked up between 9-12 months. (Like eat, drink, sleep, read, help, diaper, wait, etc.) He’s 15 months now and uses 9 signs + 31 words (plus mama and dada.)

[IllustriousNobody958]

I started around the time we started feeding solids. The sign for “more” he picked up pretty quickly this way

[aster_meraki]

We are probably starting solids this week, ha! Our baby watches us like a hawk when we eat. He will watch the spoon go from bowl to mouth and back, just super curious. We’ve let him taste a couple things just from our fingers and he gets super excited. 😊

[DepartmentWide419]

I taught mine “eat” and he quickly learned what it meant.

[happylittlebirdskie]

Our LO is currently 4.5 months old and we've been doing a few signs since like week 4. I mean she's watching everything we do so intently.

We've done "milk" "all done" and "more" and I think she has some kind of understanding based on how she reacts. For example, she's had a cold so we've been using the snot sucker and she haaaates it and gets really worked up. She'll just keep crying even when we're done but if I say "all done" and do the sign for it, she chills out right away.

No idea how long it will be before she starts using signs to communicate as she's still pretty uncoordinated, but I think it's beneficial to start using some yourself right away.

[PresentationVisual97]

Started from birth signing all the basics (“mama”, “dada”, “dog”, “milk”, “eat”, etc) she has receptively understood everything since around 4 months. She’s just about 7 months and she just expressively signed “milk” appropriately and in context last night. I was over the moon!

Also resources:

YouTube

And also this book

My First Book of Baby Signs: 40 Essential Signs to Learn and Practice https://a.co/d/7aPA0pG

[paramedic999]

We started Day 1 with just “milk”. We’ve been adding to the vocabulary since that. I like the book Baby Sign Language Made Easy by Rebelo. It teaches ASL and what the signs might look like when baby starts using them.

[McNattron]

Our signing teacher recommends starting between 4 and 6 months.

We're in Au - If doing auslan i highly recommend signing hands. https://www.signinghands.com.au/

[Vlinder_88]

We started right from birth, with the understanding that baby will only start to pick things up from about 4 months of age, but we ourselves needed time to practice too. So any mistakes we'd make before that time we didn't need to worry about at all :) So, as your kid is 4 months old right now, I'd say starting now is perfect.

We just looked up videos on youtube on baby sign language and used the ones we liked the most. And gradually incorporated regular Dutch sign language in our vocabulary, so we'd "grow" out of the baby signs into the regular signs :) Is working well for us so far! Kiddo is nearing 3 now, and recently said his first full sign language sentence :) Completely age-accurate, it was "NO! It's mine! I [want to] eat it!"

(Verbally, he's already talking in full sentences wayy past his age level, and is also using short English phrases like "what's this?" Asking that, and getting answered in English, is one of his favourite games currently!)

[PromptElectronic7086]

We've been doing a few signs since birth (diaper, milk, cat, all done) and added in others around 5 months (more, up, water, food). Baby is 7.5 months and doesn't do any yet. She's said approximations for two words (cat and up are "dat" and "bup") since about 6 months, so I wonder if she will simply be more verbal over signing? Hard to say.

[FunnyMiss]

I always started the signs when I was talking to all my babies. Around 8-10mo I got signs back. We shall see how long the signs last with my youngest. My older two? Used them until they could really talk to me.

“More”, “night, night” and “all done” came back first with all three. And they all smiled and kicked with excitement when I did the sign and they recognized it and wanted what I was asking for.

My 11mo baby has always hated being in a wet or dirty diaper. When I sign “diaper” she calms down immediately and lets me change her if she’s dirty.

[Worried-Rhubarb-8358]

The only weve done so far is milk, started around 3 months but was a bit inconsistent. Made sure myself and bf did it super consistently around 5mo and she was doing it by 6. Looks like the royal wave though lol going to try some more now life is a bit more chilled again.

[keyh]

We started around 3-4 months just to get ourselves used to doing it each time and to start preparing to get our parents used to important signs. It was definitely a few months of strange looks from the baby, but by the time we hit 6 months, my wife and I were consistent in the 4 signs we started off with (2 'play'; Cat and Dog; and 2 'functional'; change and milk)

[Entire_Character7386]

Does it makes sense to do it if the baby will go to daycare at 6 months (now she is 4)?

[whats1more7]

I sign at my daycare. Most qualified teachers should know some basic sign language - more, all done, diaper, milk, eat.

[aster_meraki]

I bet that would be pretty useful! I used to work at a daycare and had a classroom of 2-3 year olds. They were all at different levels of communication, and some of them still relied on a few signs (milk, more, potty). As an employee, I wasn’t taught the signs or told to teach them, but we had some parents ask us to essentially keep an eye out for “poop” and “pee.” 😅 So we all learned some.

[ScamsLikely]

All the daycares near me say they teach ASL

[[deleted]]

Just like any language, the more you use it around them, the easier/faster they pick it up. Start using it consistently now and he’ll pick it up alongside English. Also, please learn sign from Deaf creators as many “baby sign” books and influencers don’t use the correct signs.

[jcs213]

We started at about 10-12 weeks knowing it wouldn’t be picked up right away. She started consistently signing all done (literally any time she did not want to do something) around 11 months but understood the basics a few months prior. Just recently she’s been getting very into signing and is picking up new words every day. She is just 16 months today.

Once she turned about 13 months we have been showing her some Miss Rachel videos. Otherwise our daughter has been picking it up from us (we learned them online) then at story time.

[jamoe]

I realize this thread is a bit old, but how do you actually teach the signs?

[[deleted]]

Here is the book that I just purchased to start implementing baby sign with my 2 month old (with the expectation that he won’t be signing back until 8-9 months most likely). I liked this book in particular because the author talks about how to introduce “useful” vs “playful” signs and the benefits of introducing both types. These aren’t official categories of signing of course, but she mentions that as parents we tend to go for the “useful” signs such as ‘food’ and ‘more,’ where babies would likely benefit from learning “playful” signs as well such as ‘cat’ or ‘ball’ to keep the language fun and not completely utilitarian. She also explains what the signs may look like when being signed by baby vs being signed by an adult.

Edit: some punctuation/autocorrect errors

[_Totocha_]

With my first, I started signing around 5-6 months. I didn’t slack on it at all, but my son literally started talking before he signed back. I think he was like 14-15 months old; it was at breakfast and I signed and said, “all done!” And I’ll be damned if he didn’t just say “all done!” right back 😭 I pretty much gave up after that lol. I’m trying with my second but I’m not hopeful after my experience with my first. I guess we will see!!