I don’t know if I mentioned before that we have been signing with Anjali from pretty early on–I think as early as 3 or 4 months. Sign language is a great way to communicate with your baby, as they can usually sign well before they can talk. Babies can certainly understand signs, even before they can do them. I’m not sure, but I think baby sign language
A lot of people I talk to use a few basic signs, like “more,” “all finished” and “milk.” We have certainly used those, and Anjali is using them often now, at 14 months. She definitely started understanding them as early as 7 or 8 months. Recently, someone asked if she was deaf, when they noticed she was signing to us.
Signing has been especially helpful with elimination communication (EC). That was one of the earliest signs we used with her. She understood that one well before she used it. But now she regularly signs for the potty, which is the coolest thing! Sometimes she signs when she has just peed in her diaper. Still, it’s pretty awesome that she is communicating that.
The signs she now regularly uses (at least the ones I can think of now): potty, all finished, more, friends, hurt, dog, cat, smile, tired, sleep, music, hat, fan, light, bath, book, baby, milk, food and car/drive.
There are plenty of free resources for learning sign language online. Here are a few I like:
There are also plenty of great books, like The Baby Signing Book
We read that we should pick around 8 signs at first, and wait until Anjali learned that cluster before we started teaching her more. It didn’t really work so cut-and-dry for us. She understood and used some, but others didn’t really click. So, we just moved on and used whatever signs were pertinent. Since we have a cat, it only made sense to use that one a lot. Interestingly, that was one of the early signs we taught her, but today is the first day I saw her explicitly sign “cat.” Super cute too!
