You know that mum who always turns up to school on time with her hair neatly combed, her clothes ironed, and healthy home-made goodies tucked neatly away in her child’s lunchbox? She has the patience of Job, always uses her pleases and thank yous when speaking to her children and seems calm, cool and collected when the situation requires it?
Well, let me introduce myself, I am Shelly from Tropical Mum, and I am the opposite of the woman I just described above. It is not uncommon to find me careening down the corridors of the school with my child in tow, only to deposit my boy in his class three minutes AFTER the second bell has gone. My hair is dishevelled, and my shorts and t-shirt (I live in the tropics of far north Queensland after all) have never been introduced to the iron. My boy has, on occasion, brought the same type of sandwich/snack combination for five days straight. Patience is a scarce commodity around my house and calm, cool and collected? Only in times of emergency, and then I can only chalk it up to motherly instinct. To qualify things, I have to say my disorganisation and poor time management skills extend only to where my children are involved–I work part-time as a virtual assistant and manage to keep things ticking over nicely in that regard, but when it comes to relying on the quick movement of children to be somewhere on time, it all falls apart.
So you can imagine my surprise to be asked by Carly to contribute to her Early Childhood Resources blog. I thought she surely must have mistaken me for someone with better skills in child-rearing. So, I was wracking my brain trying to come up with something that I could contribute that would be of help to her readers that did not involve fishing wayward toys out of the toilet.
Then I remembered that, apart from having two beautiful, kind-hearted and mostly well-behaved sons, there is something I did do well when they were young that I can share with you.
In those sleep-deprived early weeks of motherhood, when I was putting the kettle in the fridge and the milk container on the kitchen bench, I heard that they were teaching babies to communicate using sign language. You should have heard me scoffing to my fellow members of mothers group: “Can you believe they expect mothers to have the TIME to teach their babies sign language on top of everything else? I am still trying to find time to have a shower, for goodness’ sake!”. Oh! Now I realise why everyone would inch away slightly whenever I was near. Oh well, moving on.
A few months later, I would be eating those words. Eventually the fog that is the newborn stage lifted, and I could start showering regularly and my friends started coming around again. The idea of teaching my baby sign language always niggled in back of my mind, and one day I came across a website or a magazine article or something that made me entertain the idea of trying to teach my 13-month-old sign language.
I found a video that explained the concept of baby signing for the first 10 minutes or so and then the rest of the video was just shots of children performing the signs for everyday items or actions such as drink, eat, more, apple, dog, cat, ball etc. These were peppered with fun animations and video clips of the actual item they were signing. My little one was TRANSFIXED every time I put that video on. I think it was the fact that it was children doing the signing and other kids are always so fascinating to babies/toddlers.
Anyway, I used the appropriate sign every time I fed him or gave him a drink. Before long he caught on to the wild gesticulations his mum was performing every time he tried to have something to eat or drink, and he did his first sign! You should have seen the celebratory dance I performed when that happened! Well, on second thought, it’s probably better you didn’t.
After that first sign, I could not keep up with the kid. He was pointing at everything around him wanting to know what the sign was for it. The video covered quite a few signs, but not enough to satisfy my son’s desire for communication. Eventually I found a great online resource for American Sign Language. You see, the premise behind baby signs is that it can be any signs that you make up, they don’t have to be the accepted Auslan or American Sign Language–just whatever works. So, I found this website and I adapted the signs to something a baby would be able to perform–just simplified them.
Eventually we got to a point where my son could communicate almost any need to me. It really reduced the frustration for both of us. There were no tantrums; he was a pretty placid child. When my youngest boy came along, we did not hesitate to do the same exercise with him. He picked it up easily, because he had his three-year-old brother to show him the ropes. Again, there was no frustration, and there were no tantrums–these came later AFTER he learned how to talk, but that is another story.
Some people have concerns that their children’s speech development will be slowed by using signs. The reality is that the child’s cognitive skills are improved thus making it possible for him or her to start talking even earlier than other kids that don’t sign. I don’t know if this happened for us, because we were so happy with the signs that we weren’t hanging out for them to start talking, so it happened naturally and without us even really noticing the transition from signs to speech.
So now the kids are talking a mile a minute and my oldest son, in particular, is a real chatterbox. It is on the days when I am seeking five minutes of peace and quiet that I question the wisdom of my choices when they were young. Should I have held on to those last moments of silent children, instead of encouraging them to communicate with me so early? Well if the choice is between tantrums or chatterboxes, I suppose I choose chatterboxes.
About Shelly
Shelly is mum to two boys aged six and four, and she lives in the far north of Queensland with her husband of 10 years. Originally hailing from Canada, and her husband being from New Zealand, they made their home in Australia in the mid-90s. They made the lifestyle change from Sydney to Cairns in late 2006 and haven’t looked back. Now, Shelly works from home part-time as a virtual assistant and studies part-time for her Bachelor of Technology. You can read more about Shelly’s take on life in her blog at Tropical Mum.
Thanks Shelly! I must go and look at this video, I know how to use Makaton, which is based on sign language, though is a tool to communicate with children that have special needs. I will do a post on the resources that I have in relation to Makaton in the coming weeks. Thanks again for sharing your resource and experience.
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Very interesting, I am going to check out that video too, and will look forward to your upcoming posts too, Carly.
I tried signing with my first child but either I didn’t pursue it enough or he wasn’t interested. In the end it didn’t matter because he was a very early talker. I do with I had tried signing with my daughter though as she is quite a late talker and I think it would of reduced everyone’s frustration levels.
My first had dyspraxia and we did natural signing – she made up signs and we worked out what she meant. We also gave her a few we’d worked out, we both know a bit of Makaton.
With our second I did it earlier and she has an enormous sign vocabulary even though she only has about 8 words. She even combines words and signs to say things like ‘Mummy drink.’ The funniest one at the moment is when she does the toilet sign for her Winnie the Pooh toothpaste.
Our speech pathologist strongly recommends signing because it gives children a sense of language and words even if they can’t get their mouths around them.
Similar story to Marilyn. I did a lot of signing early on with my eldest daughter. She actually started talking before she started copying the signs, so I didn’t continue with the signing. I am now introducing sign with my son (9.5 months) and my daughter (almost 2) is really getting into it now (though my son has no idea!).
Also, to reiterate – signing does NOT slow oral language development, but actually enhances it. (I’m a Speech Path).
Great to see that so many people are using it as a technique to promote communication! I will try and dig up the Makaton information that I have {once I finish these assignments}.
That is too cute Deb.
Thanks!
I’ve used baby sign with both my kids. My 3 yr old daughter is now a non-stop chatterbox, and my son who is 19mths old communicates with a mix of baby sign and early speech. I love the way signing reduces some of the communication frustration at this preverbal age.
(I was just in quoted in the last Practical Parenting mag talking about this topic!)
Fascinating stuff. Had I known about that back when my kids were little, I would have tried it.
Loved reading this Tropical Mum. I didn’t know about signing with my first two children but did with my last two. It made a huge difference! Especially ‘All Finished’ *thumbs squiggling up*
I can’t believe I had forgotten all about the Baby Signs until recently! It was a real life saver for me.
I see my friends struggling with their littlest ones who are frustrated with not being able to communicate their needs. I have to bite my tongue not to suggest baby signs (again). They have all witnessed how well it worked for me, but there is a perception that it is a lot of added work.
If you can move your hands when you talk, it’s as easy as that–for the first few signs, then when the baby ‘gets it’ that’s when the other resources I mentioned really help. By then you are hooked, because you realise just how useful it really is.
Anyway, thanks Miss Carly for asking be to be your guest post. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who commented and especially to my followers who have taken the time to come here to read the post and comment.
I have to agree that signing is so easy and helps so much. My eldest (Malcolm, now 3yrs) was a late talker. I was expecting it as my Mum had mentioned I was a late talker and one of my hubby’s nephews had also been a late talker. But when Malcolm started with the really aggressive, frustrated tantrums, including hitting me and throwing himself into walls, I knew something had to happen. One of my friends is a special needs teacher and knows Auslan so suggested I try a few of the basic signs for eat, water, more and finished… OMG! the amazing difference it made to our lives! Malcolm (who was almost 18 months old at the time) picked up the signs so quickly and, although not 100% accurate, we knew what he was meaning and we were able to communicate more easily with him.
Sadly I received some negative reactions from one of my local child health nurses when I enquired about speech therapy in the local area and she suggested she thought signing would delay his speech further… but as another poster above said this is so not the case. Plus, if I had to choose between the tantrums or even later speech, I’d absolutely choose later speech!
Fortunately our speech pathologists were supportive of signing and encouraged me to continue while we worked to help Malcolm begin to speak. He’s now speaking better and better every day and occasionally still using signs. We’re just starting to use them again more regularly for our 10 month old so we can hopefully begin to communicate with him a little earlier and avoid the frustrations and tantrums that Malcolm went through.
I taught 18 month olds while teaching at Even Start. They learned colors: “yellow”, “blue”, and “red” (the colors of the balls used in the ball pit) “up” and “down” for the high chair and for comfort, “more” when they wanted more food, “yes” and “no” (funny story: one child was crying and another was telling the crying child “no” using signing) We had less crying because they could communicate.
I have taught both of my children sign (being a special needs teacher, I almost did it without thinking) My eldest 2 and a half, was great at it, and we found although he talked at a similar age to his friends, he had much more vocabulary and didn’t get as frustrated, as he could always get his message across even when he didn’t know the word. Now he talks at a mile a minute, and I wish he would go back to signing!
My daughter who is 11 months is picking new signs up at an amazing rate, I think faster than her brother, it will be interesting to see when her talking develops. I am all for it, there is very little frustration, and when I don’t understand I ask her to “show me” and even if she makes a sign up (which she often does) we find the real sign and she soon learns it.
Kids are amazing and just because their vocal chords haven’t matured enough for talking doesn’t mean they can’t talk!
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