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Tip for parents - teach your babies Sign Language. They can communicate with you much earlier than they can learn to talk clearly. So much easier when a baby

Tip for parents - teach your babies Sign Language. They can communicate with you much earlier than they can learn to talk clearly. So much easier when a baby can tell you they're all done or want more than to have to figure that out without communication.

throwaway173738 2y ago
Babies absolutely will still communicate by utterance, gaze, reach, and body language what they want. My son has a particular cry that means either that he wants food, wants to comfort nurse, or wants water. When we hear that my wife and I can just present those three things one by one and he’ll select what he wants. Don’t feel like you have to follow this advice.
- HumblyTossed 2y ago
  > Babies absolutely will still communicate by utterance, gaze, reach, and body language what they want. Oh, I totally get that. But SL makes it that much easier. > Don’t feel like you have to follow this advice. I wasn't commanding anyone to do something. Good Grief.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Certainly no one should feel obligated to follow anyone's advice! There's too much contradictory parenting advice going around to be able to follow it all. That said, there's a marked difference between the kinds of assymetrical communication that you're describing and baby sign language. We've done sign with each of our three children and it's remarkable to watch them pick it up—they clearly understand that these hand gestures are words that carry specific meaning and get a lot of delight out of learning and applying them correctly and being mimicked and understood. The language center of the brain clearly develops much faster than the parts responsible for controlling the tongue, and sign gives them a great outlet for that language. Also, you don't have to do anything complicated to give them just a little bit of sign, so unlike a lot of parenting advice it's not difficult to try out. Just say a word while making a sign (ASL if you want but we'll sometimes just make up one on the spot) and then give them the thing or do the thing. "More", "water", "milk", "diaper", "good night", "up"—just pick one and try it! Once you start and see their delight it's hard to stop.
  - munchbunny 2y ago
    > Certainly no one should feel obligated to follow anyone's advice! There's too much contradictory parenting advice going around to be able to follow it all. As one of many, many parents, my observation has been that there is so much contradictory parenting advice because there is so much variation in the kids, in terms of behaviors, personalities, the order in which they bootstrap their motor vs verbal skills, body awareness, etc., etc. As a result, consuming parenting advice is like going down a checklist of things to try, and the kid won’t respond to most of it.
- d1sxeyes 2y ago
  Of course you don’t have to, but I don’t think this was intended as an instruction, rather as helpful advice. I would second it, my son still uses a few signs (especially “sorry”) even now he’s two.
empath75 2y ago
As a parent of three kids, total waste of time. For one, ASL isn't the only way to communicate with signs, and it's not the most efficient way to communicate with signs with kids -- they'll develop their own ways of signaling what they want. It's more of a parlor trick than anything else -- "Look what my kid can do!". I've got 3 kids and they were all very good at communicating what they want. We taught a few signs to our oldest kid, but it wasn't any easier to figure out what he wanted, and by the time he was using them effectively, he was basically talking already, we didn't bother with the other two. (Going to clarify a bit: If the purpose is to communicate better with your kids before they can talk, it's a waste of time. Learning ASL is a valuable thing to do for many other reasons.)
- munchbunny 2y ago
  This goes against fairly general advice that I’ve received from early intervention specialists, including for my own child (not diagnosed as neurodivergent, just speech delayed). In our case the kid picked up signs we were teaching him (not ASL, just intentional signs) weeks before corresponding words, and there are still words he signs and understands but can’t pronounce. The point was to introduce expressive language for functional concepts (hunger, wanting help, wanting to be picked up, etc.), and beyond its role as a precursor to spoken words, it absolutely made our lives easier. It’s a well known phenomenon that the ability to pronounce words lags behind the ability to express “language”. Your kids clearly didn’t need it, but it’s still a useful tool.
- rndmio 2y ago
  Consider for a moment that maybe your experience isn't universal. I took both of mine to baby sign classes and both were able to communicate things such as hungry, tired, milk, nappy etc long before they were able to talk. Along with other parents at the same classes it was absolutely not a waste of time in terms of being able to communicate better with the children before they could talk.
- HumblyTossed 2y ago
  We’ve had great experiences with teaching the babies we’ve had sign language.

throwaway173738 2y ago

Babies absolutely will still communicate by utterance, gaze, reach, and body language what they want. My son has a particular cry that means either that he wants food, wants to comfort nurse, or wants water. When we hear that my wife and I can just present those three things one by one and he’ll select what he wants. Don’t feel like you have to follow this advice.

HumblyTossed 2y ago
> Babies absolutely will still communicate by utterance, gaze, reach, and body language what they want. Oh, I totally get that. But SL makes it that much easier. > Don’t feel like you have to follow this advice. I wasn't commanding anyone to do something. Good Grief.
lolinder 2y ago
Certainly no one should feel obligated to follow anyone's advice! There's too much contradictory parenting advice going around to be able to follow it all. That said, there's a marked difference between the kinds of assymetrical communication that you're describing and baby sign language. We've done sign with each of our three children and it's remarkable to watch them pick it up—they clearly understand that these hand gestures are words that carry specific meaning and get a lot of delight out of learning and applying them correctly and being mimicked and understood. The language center of the brain clearly develops much faster than the parts responsible for controlling the tongue, and sign gives them a great outlet for that language. Also, you don't have to do anything complicated to give them just a little bit of sign, so unlike a lot of parenting advice it's not difficult to try out. Just say a word while making a sign (ASL if you want but we'll sometimes just make up one on the spot) and then give them the thing or do the thing. "More", "water", "milk", "diaper", "good night", "up"—just pick one and try it! Once you start and see their delight it's hard to stop.
- munchbunny 2y ago
  > Certainly no one should feel obligated to follow anyone's advice! There's too much contradictory parenting advice going around to be able to follow it all. As one of many, many parents, my observation has been that there is so much contradictory parenting advice because there is so much variation in the kids, in terms of behaviors, personalities, the order in which they bootstrap their motor vs verbal skills, body awareness, etc., etc. As a result, consuming parenting advice is like going down a checklist of things to try, and the kid won’t respond to most of it.
d1sxeyes 2y ago
Of course you don’t have to, but I don’t think this was intended as an instruction, rather as helpful advice. I would second it, my son still uses a few signs (especially “sorry”) even now he’s two.

empath75 2y ago

As a parent of three kids, total waste of time. For one, ASL isn't the only way to communicate with signs, and it's not the most efficient way to communicate with signs with kids -- they'll develop their own ways of signaling what they want. It's more of a parlor trick than anything else -- "Look what my kid can do!". I've got 3 kids and they were all very good at communicating what they want. We taught a few signs to our oldest kid, but it wasn't any easier to figure out what he wanted, and by the time he was using them effectively, he was basically talking already, we didn't bother with the other two. (Going to clarify a bit: If the purpose is to communicate better with your kids before they can talk, it's a waste of time. Learning ASL is a valuable thing to do for many other reasons.)

munchbunny 2y ago
This goes against fairly general advice that I’ve received from early intervention specialists, including for my own child (not diagnosed as neurodivergent, just speech delayed). In our case the kid picked up signs we were teaching him (not ASL, just intentional signs) weeks before corresponding words, and there are still words he signs and understands but can’t pronounce. The point was to introduce expressive language for functional concepts (hunger, wanting help, wanting to be picked up, etc.), and beyond its role as a precursor to spoken words, it absolutely made our lives easier. It’s a well known phenomenon that the ability to pronounce words lags behind the ability to express “language”. Your kids clearly didn’t need it, but it’s still a useful tool.
rndmio 2y ago
Consider for a moment that maybe your experience isn't universal. I took both of mine to baby sign classes and both were able to communicate things such as hungry, tired, milk, nappy etc long before they were able to talk. Along with other parents at the same classes it was absolutely not a waste of time in terms of being able to communicate better with the children before they could talk.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
We’ve had great experiences with teaching the babies we’ve had sign language.