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Infant Signing |
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Daddy-Daughter reading time. They are enjoying “Baby Signs for Bedtime” and Dad is demonstrating the sign for “love”. |
Infant Signing is a way to communicate with your baby before your baby can talk. By using simple gestures that your baby associates with different words, your baby can communicate with you.
There are many different types of infant signing programs, but we reccommend Baby Signs®, developed by Dr. Acredolo and Dr. Goodwyn, who did the original research on using signs with babies.
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Our Experiences with Baby Signs® |
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I became interested in infant signing when reading a book about children’s brain development when I was pregnant with my first baby. I purchased the Baby Signs book and was very excited about doing signing with my baby. She didn’t really show any interest in signing until she was around 13 months old (this is on the late side, many babies show interest in signing at a younger age). She was ill and signed to us that she needed a drink. We took her queue and began to model more signs. Baby Signs® became a wonderful source of fun and communication for us. Since she didn’t speak any words until she was around 16 months old, we would have missed out on so much of her cute personality! Not only did we enjoy infant signing, but she did too. After she got a couple of signs under her belt, she would use them to have “conversations” with us, just for the pure joy of us being able to understand what she was “saying”. She started speaking very well, very quickly at around 20 months, but still continues to love her Baby Signs® board books and modeling the signs for her baby sister. One of the first things she did with her new little sister, was try to show her how to do the Baby Sign® for cat.
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Baby Signs®, the Gentle Approach |
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Our experience with Baby Signs made me a great believer in the Baby Signs® approach to “signing” with babies. I do not believe that a baby needs to have a ridged approach to his or her first form of communication. Baby Signs® is wonderful in that the parent and baby can enjoy communicating together. Our first daughter made up many of her own signs as well as using some modified ASL signs and signs suggested in the Baby Signs book. With our very young children our focus should not be on the “correct” sign, but on the joy of communication.
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or call 706-624-3267 Monday - Friday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EST.
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