Thoughts on Sign Language

While we were waiting for our referral during the winter and early spring, I read and heard a lot about baby sign language. We even saw a baby sign with her parents at a waiting families meeting that we attended in March. Though I thought this was a neat concept and was interesting to watch, I really did not think that I could learn how to do it in time for when Angelina got home. During our traveling and trips back and fourth to Russia, we just were too busy to try to get anything extra done besides the necessities, never mind sign language.

However, what I noticed about Angelina's language skills is that she does want to communicate but still has trouble forming words and getting her wants and needs expressed. So, I started to think back to this sign language idea and since I'm home with Angelina all day, I figured that we could learn this together. I found this great site:

http://www.mybabycantalk.com/content/dictionary/dictionaryofsigns.aspx?letter=A

It has a video to go with each word in its dictionary, which helps me as sometimes a picture of a sign can be deceiving.

I started signing with Angelina about 3 weeks ago. She now knows how to sign the following words: more, eat, milk, please, thank you, help, up & down, and shoes. It has been amazing to see her use these words to aid in her communication. At first, I was not sure. She was just signing after I said the word. But, last week, she wanted to get out of her car seat, and I see in my mirror her sign the word "help". I had to laugh. So she has been using the words independently when she wants something. She is starting to figure out that she can use the signs to communicate, which has been helpful and less frustrating for the both of us.

We have started to put sounds with our signs as well, which is helping Angelina associate her signs with certain sounds. For example, when she signs "more" she will say "mmmm", and when she signs "thank you", she will sat "ta". Though her language is coming slowly but surely, using sign language has been a great tool to help us communicate.