Last night Michael was telling me about this book his boss had mentioned, which advocates teaching your babies to sign so you can communicate with them before they can even speak. It's a fascinating idea, and I know I just heard about this recently, maybe chatting with someone at church, so I was already intrigued with the idea.
He brought the book by this morning, and I read it with great interest. Apparently infants' manual motor skills develop far sooner than the speech capacity, and babies as young as six months can be taught to sign! Jane is ten months old, so she should pick it up in no time. Today we learned three signs ('We' as in me, with Jane very soon to follow) and are going to rehearse them until Jane is fluent.
Part of why this fascinates me so much is that sign language actually counts as another language. Infants who sign are already bilingual when they begin to speak, and therefore have an advantage in learning another spoken language. This book uses the symbols of American Sign Language, which is something I want my kids to know anyway. This way, we get a head start on the learning and can actually have conversations meanwhile!
I am very excited about this. Will keep you posted as to whether or not it works.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
My cousin did this with her little boy, Tanner, and it is the coolest thing! He can communicate politely and effectively while his verbal skills are growing. I think it helps him not be frustrated if he can't say a new word because he can still make himself understood. Also, it's great because he can say thank you and please and more without sounding like a demanding toddler at the dinner table.
I know Ben's mom did this with him. And to this day he still uses it...sometimes.
We did some signs, although we mostly just made them up. Usually, though, she would learn the word at the same time as the sign--but it did help us interpret what she was trying to say. The only one she still uses much is "Please."
Yes, it's a great idea for helping kids get over frustrations in communication. Since Amy's family all knows sign language (her mom has deaf parents), we've tried it (albeit not very consistently) with Meredith since she was about 4 months. It hasn't seemed to catch on with her.
As for making it easier for the child to pick up a second spoken language, I'm skeptical. Sign language has no syntax or grammatical structure. I'm not sure you can compare the two.
Post a Comment