Baby Signing

I have a question - does baby signing delay speech? Reason I ask is that I look after a little boy who is just over 2.5 years and he was a baby signer - he has only just stopped using signs for thank you and please very recently and saying the word instead. It's ok for us as we learnt baby signing when we looked after a little one who had hearing difficulties, but I always worried that people who didn't know signing would just think he was being rude, when they gave him something and he didn't say thank you but would sign it.

I think signing is something everyone should learn as it overcomes language and disability barriers!
 
I have a question - does baby signing delay speech? Reason I ask is that I look after a little boy who is just over 2.5 years and he was a baby signer - he has only just stopped using signs for thank you and please very recently and saying the word instead. It's ok for us as we learnt baby signing when we looked after a little one who had hearing difficulties, but I always worried that people who didn't know signing would just think he was being rude, when they gave him something and he didn't say thank you but would sign it.

I think signing is something everyone should learn as it overcomes language and disability barriers!

I'm sure titch will be able to give you a better answer but from the research I've done it actually does the opposite.

It helps to encourage communication and eventually speech.

I think that it would be a great thing for kids to learn at nursery for example ... Like sing and sign type things as its only "actions" to songs


Please excuse any typos from my fat fingers!
Tapatalk madness!
 
My MIL and SIL are both very into sign language and want to do it with my LO (with my permission and participation of course) SIL actually wants to do the course to teach it herself. I didn't really know much about it, but this thread has been very informative :) I love the idea of it helping his development and communication.
 
Yes tweety is quite right. There are lots of studies that show it improves speech development. In general baby signers speak in sentences sooner and have a vocabulary approximately one year ahead of their peers at age 4 (long after they've dropped the signing) one study followed kids up age 8 and found the baby signers group had significantly higher IQ.

If you think about how fast they grow, in the first 2 years of life a babys brain grows and makes connections faster than it ever will for the rest of their life. The more input you can give to learning at this stage, the easier they will find it to use their brains years later.

One of the main rules of baby signing is that you ALWAYS speak as you sign, you must never ever sign in silence. You're giving them a visula clue to help them learn the meaning of the word you're saying. For this reason most baby signers will "speak" as they sign too, as this is all they've known. At a very young age, 7 months, my LO would sign milk but he would also say "errrr" as he signed, it was like in his head he was saying a word cos that's what he'd grasped he was supposed to do. As he got older his spoken word gradually got clearer and clearer. Now he's 2 and a half and doesn't use his signs apart from when he comes to classes with me or he's signing the songs. Sometimes he will sign "sweeties" as he's nagging me if I keep saying know. I guess he thinks it add credit to his case lol.
 
Yes tweety is quite right. There are lots of studies that show it improves speech development. In general baby signers speak in sentences sooner and have a vocabulary approximately one year ahead of their peers at age 4 (long after they've dropped the signing) one study followed kids up age 8 and found the baby signers group had significantly higher IQ.

If you think about how fast they grow, in the first 2 years of life a babys brain grows and makes connections faster than it ever will for the rest of their life. The more input you can give to learning at this stage, the easier they will find it to use their brains years later.

One of the main rules of baby signing is that you ALWAYS speak as you sign, you must never ever sign in silence. You're giving them a visual clue to help them learn the meaning of the word you're saying. For this reason most baby signers will "speak" as they sign too, as this is all they've known. At a very young age, 7 months, my LO would sign milk but he would also say "errrr" as he signed, it was like in his head he was saying a word cos that's what he'd grasped he was supposed to do. As he got older his spoken word gradually got clearer and clearer. Now he's 2 and a half and doesn't use his signs apart from when he comes to classes with me or he's signing the songs. Sometimes he will sign "sweeties" as he's nagging me if I keep saying no. I guess he thinks it add credit to his case lol.
 
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If you think that 1 in 5 kids start school with a speech delay its not surprising that there will be the odd case of a baby signer who also had delayed speech. But you have to wonder, would this kid have been delayed further if he hadn't done the signing. Certainly most 2 year olds with delayed speech are very frustrated toddlers, but being able to sign probably saved this child a lot of stress and frustration as he had a way of communicating with people.

As a speech and language therapist if I met a 2 year old who wasn't speaking yet, I'd usually recommend that the parents start using signing asap. It would reduce frustration for the child but also seems to 'jumpstart' their speech development and they end up speaking.

Its not a new thing, speech therapists have been using signing with hearing children for decades. Baby signing is all about using these techniques to try and avoid a speech delay to start with, afterall, prevention is better than cure, especially in child development.
 
We had sign number 25!!! Just two weeks short of her first birthday. She signed 'cat' when the felix cat food advert was on!!!

Xxx


On my iPhone - so cant see tickers :(
 
:cheer: horray!

Also very impressed that you're able to keep count. :lol: have you got any photos of her signing? I posted one yesterday of my LO signing 'milk' to my FB <3 miss those days. He just shouts at me now!
 
I go to 2 sing and sign groups run by the local children's centre we also do a little signing at Baby Sensory group. Nurseries and pre school round here seem to be pretty hot on signing so I really want Madison to try learn it too :)
 
I'm joining our local signing course in January ben will be 5months old I'm so excited :) x
 
I may have asked this earlier in the thread but is baby sign makaton or bsl?! Or are there options x
 
I may have asked this earlier in the thread but is baby sign makaton or bsl?! Or are there options x

Various options. I am joining tinytalk which are I think the only bsl one? Could be wrong though. Xx
 
LO and I are starting sing and sign classes on Thursday. Really excited!! xx
 
Is baby signing just the same ad makaton? I'm fluent in makaton so might use it
 
Is baby signing just the same ad makaton? I'm fluent in makaton so might use it

Yeah people use BSL or Makaton. I'm pretty sure sing and sign is BSL. BBC seem to use Makaton or rather Justin/Mr Tumble does.


Using Tapatalk can't see no tickers grrrrr.
 
We did a sing and sign workshop at our nursery and then started using it with the children ( mainly the younger ones as the older ones who could talk tended not to be too bothered) but we found it helped a lot with behavioural issues as try weren't so frustrated- will definitely be doing it with my baby when she arrives! X
 
Think it's too late for Jackson to start signing?

I find only now he is doing things back to me like waving goodbye etc or does it need to be started from early on?

xxxx
 
Ahh scrolled back and read about the baby sign and action songs. I think Jackson does quite alot of this in nursery as its always in his wee jotter he was action singing.

xxxxxx
 
not too late! you can use it with older children to teach more difficult words like colours or "big" and "little" most people do it by instinct, stretching their arms out for "big" etc...
 

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