If you signed with your baby...

[GreenGranolaMama]

At what age did you start and when did your baby start signing back? I've been doing milk with my 9mo DS and he does not sign it yet, but somtimes gets excited when he sees me do it because he knows it is milk time

[Aufilia]

We started to sign with DD at 6 months and she started to sign back at 10mo. (She started to talk at 8.5mo, though, so she actually talked first.)

[Icehockey18]

We have been doing milk, mommy and daddy for almost two months now as ds hasn't signed back. He does get excited when I do 'milk', but I'm also usually sitting down and adjusting my shirt at the same time... So who knows if it's the signing or the general cues that he's getting excited for... We will keep at it though...

[sapphire_chan]

Signing kicked in long after talking for us. She now picks up the signs for words with signs at about the same time she gets the word, and she's added signs for words she was saying previously.

We started with "milk" for nursing at birth and a shaken T for potty by one week old. She used the potty sign while on the toilet around 10 months? one time. But around 13 months when we finally checked Signing Time out from the library things really took off.

Part of it was that she's highly motivated by other kids, by music, and things adults do as adults not as parents. So just having me and dh sign to her didn't convince her that it was worth it. But kids doing signing and a singing adult doing signing? Oh yeah, let's go for it.

[Abraisme]

I started at 7mo, but didn't get anything back until 14mo. My DS was a little language delayed, thus even his signing was a little late. Once he understood though he learned a lot of signs really quickly. I would say he knew 200+ by the time he was 2.

[hakeber]

We started signing with him almost from the start around 1 month(?), and he start signing back around the same time he got control of his arms and hands, around 7 or 8 months with the signs for milk, and sleep and a few others.

[Vegan Princess]

I really started around 9 months. She started doing the sign for milk pretty quickly but back then it was indescriminate. Then she stopped using that sign until recently when the pulling on the shirt got on my nerves and I reminded her. Now she does it ALL THE TIME and I know she means nursing. She also started using the sign for more and all done around 10ish months. She picked up a couple more signs over the next month or 2 - dog and bird and bath. Dog is her favorite sign. But now at a year old, all the sudden she uses a new sign every day. We started a new ASL playgroup last week and have been watching sign language videos a lot so I've really stepped up my use of signs but she is just a sponge. Now she does book, fish, pig, cheese, etc. It wows me every time she uses a new sign!

Cindy

[mckittre]

We started with a few signs around 4 or 5 months, but my 11.5 month old still isn't really signing back yet. I know he understands them, but all he'll do for me is an occasional "dog". I know it's supposed to be such a help, but I'm kind of wondering if he'll ever get it. I haven't tried any videos yet - maybe that would work better.

[PTmorgan]

With DS1 we started a couple of signs around 6 months - he started with "more" at around 10 months. It seemed to take forever, and I was thinking that signing would be useless for us. However, it was really really helpful from 1-2 years old. For example, at 13 months he was standing in the bathroom getting ready for bed. I thought he was just tired, but once he started signing it seemed like he was more sad. He signed "more" "medicine" "teeth". I took a look at his gums, and sure enough he had a tooth coming. We went downstairs to get his homeopathic chamomile. Another time he came running up signing "help" "kitty" and made a meowing sound. I found the cat locked down in the basement. At 14 months I was trying to nurse him to sleep. He jumped to his feet and signed "nursing" "all done" "downstairs" "Daddy". So cute! We did about 35 signs total with him. His signing petered out once his verbal language picked up.

Now DS2 is 8.5 months old. We've been doing a couple of signs with him intermittently. DS1 has started remembering these signs and using them occasionally. Today DS2 clearly did the sign for Daddy back to us! We're so excited! It's a lot earlier than we expected, but we are basing it on DS1's use.

We're planning to do sign language with the second one as well. Of course, every child is different, so we'll just offer him the opportunity to use it. It's up to him if it works for him.

[teagan01]

I started signing around 5 mos. One twin will do the sign for milk 1 out of 5 times starting at 8 mos. My other twin has not started yet and they are 8.5 mos now.

[2boyzmama]

With our first son, we started signing haphazardly around 8 months, and he picked up a few within a couple weeks (milk, mommy, bed). He was an early talker, so he never really used the signs much, but we used them a lot (at a noise play place, for example) By about 18 months the signs were completely gone because his verbal vocabulary was so huge.

Our second son has hearing loss and several birth defects that cause him to be essentially non-verbal. We didn't start signing until 11 months (only because we were so focussed on his other health needs, communication was low on our priority list frankly). He picked them up slowly at first, by 18 months he had maybe 10-15, but by age 2 he had over 100, and now at almost 3 he has close to 200 signs!! He is fully age-appropriate with his communication (if you counted his signs as verbal words, his vocabulary is age appropriate, he strings them together to form multi-word sentences, he even "hand babbles" where he makes up a sign if he doesn't know the correct sign)

Since we sign with our middle son, our older son has started signing again (and has just as big a sign vocabulary as his brother) and our baby is being exposed to sign. At 4 months old he's not doing any on his own yet of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if he starts doing them between 6-9 months just because he has so much exposure.

[AKislandgirl]

I started signing with DD at 4 months with the milk sign. She started signing back at 6 months. Then we've added more and now at 12 months she signs about 10 or more words. She seems to be adding more all the time.

I haven't done any videos with her yet but I think it would be fun to start. What do you all recommend? I see that there are a lot of signing time videos and am not sure which to get.