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Offspring and sign language

gizmo_mathboy on 2006-12-26T05:36:54

I think hfb's and jhi's recent spawning sparked this post (and a lot of conversations with my wife as well).

I think teaching my son sign language is the single, best parenting thing we have done. I really look forward to seeing how our daughter-to-be handles it.

We couldn't imagine the crying, frustration and misery that we would be going through if he couldn't even do rudimentary communication.

We got hooked on this from a friend and she exposed us to Signing Time. There are probably many other good videos and such out there, this is what we hit on first. I think I have the entire series tivo'd from our pbs station.

About a month ago my wife sat down and tried to determine how many signs he knows. It was over 60. He was about 16 months old at the time. He spoke maybe 6-8. It is amazing the capacity for communication our species has.

I can not recommend strongly enough that if you have a young child that you should teach it sign language. I think it defuses frustration and lets you know what they want, at least earlier and more precisely. Otherwise they are left to pointing, grunting and crying until they have the verbal skills. It is just amazing to see his language develop and change daily if not hourly.

It was the most amazing thing this weekend when he signed "please". Well, I guess the list is long about the amazing things small humans do as the grow, especially when it's your genes doing it.

Edit: Talking with my wife, we started signing to him around 6 months. Mostly simple things like: more, eat and milk. He didn't start signing back until he was 10 months old, which made us wonder if the whole signing thing was working. Now at 17 months (almost) he is signing a new word every day.

interesting!

rhesa on 2006-12-28T15:20:20

My wife and I are quite interested in these "alternative" child-raising methods. We're practicing Attachment Parenting and stuff with our four-month-old daughter, as well as EC (Elimination Communication, aka infant potty-training). Sofar it seems to pay off: our little girl is very sweet, patient, and attentive. I'm sure I'm biased, but the three of us are very happy with each other, and I'm convinced positive parenting is a great benefit.

More to the point, there's a book entitled "Baby Signs" on our coffee table right now. It's a bit early to get started (and your edit seems to corroborate that), so it's interesting to see what kind of progress you make with your little one. I'm encouraged by your post that it's worthwhile to invest in it. Being able to communicate with the child must be an amazing experience. Keep us informed :)

Re:interesting!

gizmo_mathboy on 2007-01-09T05:20:47

My wife is doing the Attached Parenting thing for the most part. Don't know much about EC.

We are also doing Positive Parenting. The big benefit is from my wife's teacher experience. She saw first hand how some parents' attempt at this worked (or failed for the most part it seemed). I think because they were too permissive. You can still be positive about not allowing bad behavior. It is something to think about how you say things to avoid getting into bad habits yourself.

I think my toughest task is to have a gradient of "no" things and to have a tone to go with it. I try to say why things aren't allowed instead of just "no". Once again, my wife's experience is proving very helpful here.

Our boy is even tempered for the most part but he's hitting the age where he is getting fussier. Then again, cutting molars and the teeth after that will spoil most people's mood I think.

Signing worked for us... once

dpisoni on 2007-01-07T22:25:54

With our first child, we started signing with him at about seven months. It was very effective: he picked up the signs quickly, and was able to become an effective communicator. We didn't use all that many signs (let's see... food, milk, water, more, please, thank you, help, mommy, daddy... I think that's it), and by the time he was 12 months or so he started replacing the signs with English. He doesn't use them any more, by the time he was 18 months his English vocabulary far outweighed his ability to sign (occasionally he'll sign for "please" while saying it, as a kind of "pretty please.")

In some part I attribute his taking to the signs as a reflection of how desperate he was to communicate with us. As a wee lad he had colic, and so he lived much of his early life in pain. Communication about that was very helpful for him, and it taught him the value of the "feedback loop."

My daughter (second born) is a different story. We started trying to teach her signs around seven months as well, and by eight months she was clearly understanding the signs. But she wouldn't do them. Not at all. Not even if we sat with her and demanded she signed what she wanted (as an alternative to whining and pointing.) Not even if we sat for twenty minutes like that. She was so amazingly stubborn she refused to do it, and the lack of communication didn't frustrate her at all.
After twelve months, she started signing - only most of the signs were of her own creation. (She used the signs for "please", "thank you", and "food", but little else.) She became SO effective at making up highly understandable signs that she was not motivated to learn more English. Even worse, sometimes she would learn to speak a word, then /replace it/ with a sign and refuse to use the word any more. (At 24 months now, she still refuses to say "banana" despite having used the word at 18 months.) She is very effective at communicating simple things non-verbally, and even people other than my wife and myself can understand what she's trying to say with her cues. Fortunately, she's finally become frustrated with her inability to make more complex sentences out of signs and has starting using more words. (She's pretty far behind where my son was on diction at this age though, since she hasn't really been practicing!)

All this to say, signing can work wonders for some kids, and not amount to a hill of beans with others. We will assuredly try to teach our third signing when the time comes, but we have no idea the outcome.

Re:Signing worked for us... once

gizmo_mathboy on 2007-01-09T05:13:38

We have a girl on the way (90% certain from the ultrasound) and it will be interesting to see how she does.

I've read that girls learn language faster and develop fine motor skills earlier in general to boys and my wife's experience as a teacher agrees with this for the most part.

We try to use ASL but have fallen short on a couple occasions, mostly because we didn't look up the sign. My son basically signs "all done" for toast because when the toaster oven dings we would say the toast is all done and I think he only had a sign for "all done".

I would say my son's signing is sloppy because his fine motor skills kind of suck. For signs like: meat, peas, grapes, melon and such he mostly just points to the back his hand. He does better about some days. We joking say all of his favorite foods are "back of the hand" foods because of this.

His spoke vocabulary is ok, maybe 8-10 words but I figure he will be slow to speak because he has a good sized signing vocabulary.

Like all things human it's more of a probability distribution than anything.

I think the simple signs really does wonders for a child. They can get basic wants understand much sooner or at least the parents can understand more clearly sooner.