Do you sign with your kids?

We picked up a book on baby sign language when I was still pregnant because OMG of COURSE we were going to sign with our baby! And he’d be communicating by the time he was 5 months old and potty trained by 9 months and we would totally win all the parenting awards! On further inspection, a lot of the signs were not ASL but were kind of random (proprietary?) and we both lost interest. And then! I got Baby Signing Time and started watching it with Niko.

He loves this show. He calls babies (photos of babies, other small children, baby dolls) “beebee” or “beebees.” He refers to the show as “beebeesh” and makes the sign for baby when requesting it. So there was that going on, but for weeks and weeks that was the only sign he made (other than pointing) and honestly, he did that before starting the videos. Nesko demonstrated it to him while holding Niko’s baby doll and he just picked it up. So other than that, Niko made no signs. He watched the videos, he requested them, but he didn’t interact with them or try to make the signs.

Until he did start making the signs.

He’s got the “baby” sign down, and also makes the sign for “eat,” “airplane,” “more,” “please,” and “cheese.” He spent a large part of today signing “more cheese please” and receiving the asked for cheese, which was pretty nice because he’s been on a cheese/dairy strike lately. Of those signs, he has verbal words for “baby,” “more,” and “please.” And I guess for “eat.” He makes “myom nyom mnyom” noises and smacks his lips WHICH YES IS ADORABLE. He also made a sign that looked like the sign for milk but when I asked him if he wanted milk he said no.

Sometimes he just likes saying no, though.

Do you sign with your kids?

Niko is 21 months old, not Deaf or hearing impaired, seemingly neurotypical, and with a pretty large verbal vocabulary. We’ve only been doing this a few weeks (accompanied by me signing whenever I remember to sign and also remember the sign) but the results have been pretty cool so far. I wish we’d started earlier.

The only thing Niko likes more than beebeesh is trains, which maybe gives you a clue about just how much he likes the signing videos.

<input ... >

Mirrored from Now Showing!.