Anyone else have a kid who had NO USE WHATSOEVER for signing? - Page 2

[MiaMama]

My DD didn't really use it to communicate when she was a baby, but now that she is 3, we have new uses for simple signing.

When she and I are having trouble communicating, like I am asking her to do or not do something, and she is ignoring me or is resistant, I can sometimes ask her if it is ok for me to ask her a different way. I got the idea when I was losing my cool, and I took a breath and said "can I ask you nicely?" That worked, but only sometimes. So I ask her in other ways, too. Like "can I ask you with my hands?" and I sign to her while also saying the words. I guess the novelty of it catches her attention, then we can get ready to go, or get dinner in her mouth, or whatever. So I am glad we know a few signs.

The other is that she "teaches" her baby sister (2 weeks old) to sign. It is something that she can do with DD2 without actually touching her, because she does not get that she has to be REALLY gentle with a newborn.

I spent no money and only a little time working on signing. We look stuff up online when we are curious, and I never got her any videos. So I guess I had low expectations to begin with.

[spmamma]

Originally Posted by sapphire_chan

Well you've got to remember you've got a kid who enunciates clearly. A few times round of "what sweetie? what do you want? A "frezelsprout"? Um... can you *show* me a "frezelsprout"? and he'd have been quite glad of a sign for faucet.

That may be true for some kids, but my DD was a late talker and was never into signs. I think she maybe picked up three total... she was simply never interested in them.

[~cassie~]

My youngest son is an early talker and is quite good at it and rarely uses sign. But my middle son knows thousands of signs-he even signs the alphabet But he is also deaf with a severe language delay and we opted to do sign to help bridge to spoken language. It helps for me to be able to sign "no" or "stop" etc when in public places without having to yell across the store to get their attention. My oldest likes using it as our secret language

[lactatinggirl]

I thought my daughter (12 months) wasn't really into signing (because all she did was "more" and "milk" and only when I said it first) until we took an actual class. She loves the class and all of a sudden her signing has exploded. She now signs more, milk, dog, yay, shoes, and cheese. This is all after 6 weekly classes that last an hour.

[SoCaliMommy]

I didn't see the reason, it just sems like it would give a child a reason to not learn to speech since they could just sign and use their hands instead.

[Baby_Cakes]

I gave up before I even gave it a chance. I have zero knowledge of ASL, and with an infant, trying to first learn the signs myself and then remember to use them was beyond me. I kind of want to take some time to familiarize myself with signing before I have another kid, b/c it might be cool. But I have no idea!
I honestly don't think it's the be all end all, myself. Pretty cool if it works for you, but I didn't do it and Nora is perfectly fine!

[honey-lilac]

My son didn't say anything until about age 2; for him signing worked WONDERS with frustration levels.

My daughter, who is YOUNGER than him, started talking EARLIER than him. I don't think she ever learned any sign language. Maybe passively from watching him but she never signed, I don't think. Now at just having turned 2 she is already speaking in like 8-10 word sentences. My son, at 2, had maybe... maybe half a dozen words total? (He's talking decently now a year later, but he was definitely a late bloomer.)

[mckittre]

People tend to be passionate about what worked for them, and signing works for many kids, even if it's not nearly all of them. And marketing is marketing. That said, cheapskates like me can easily learn all the signs they might want to know without spending a cent from online dictionaries.

[tbone_kneegrabber]

I think it is also an issue of sing language being a LANGUAGE that *you* might not use. If you knew "hola" and "aqua" and showed your kid a dvd in spanish would you be surprised that the kid didn't speak spanish?

We used ASL with ds because I study ASL and have worked at school for the Deaf. We used it a lot, many people reinforced signing (me, dp, and our other housemates) so ds saw lots of people using ASL to communicate, sometimes we did "sim com" (which is speaking and signing) and sometimes we just signed. We use it as a language and ds was able to understand that and pick up on it.

Kids also pick up on what is rewarded. If the kid says a word or tries to say a word and parents and other folks respond then the kid is going to keep trying to do that, because it works. If the kid signs and no one responds, why would they keep doing it?

Also kids pick up signing the way the pick up spoken language, so you know your kid wants a "nana" or wants to throw the "ba" even if the pronunciation isn't "perfect," you might also know what a little kid sounds like when they are learning to say those words (I think every kid I know says "nana" for banana) but you might not know what the mispronunciation of a sign looks like if you've never been around kids that sign (especially as their primary means of communication) so the equivalent of "nana" in sign language might not get a response from parents and caregivers so the kid gives up on it and tries something else.

Unless folks are raising bilingual children or involved in a Deaf community they are most likely using sign language as a tool not a full fledged language, some tools work great for some families while sometimes they don't.

[almadianna]

just like everything in parenting.. sign is trial and error. it works for some.. not for others.. it might work for a while... it might never.. and its ok. i had a child who at a very young age knew what she wanted, she signed up a storm and it did help her not get frustrated with us. my son is a lot more laid back and it didnt help when he was a baby, but as a toddler when he gets really frustrated he reverts to signs because it helps him get out what he cannot really pronounce (or what I am not understanding ). both my children have spoken quite early but signing helped then communicate in times when the circuits werent all there...

[neverdoingitagain]

Lets see, dd#1 was taught signs very early on. She really caught onto them around 12-18 months along with speech. She actually had a pretty big vocabulary around that age. We did use them regularly though.

DD#2 was taught signs around 6 months-even now. She never uses them. Gives me look like I'm crazy when I try to teach her a sign (I'm not kidding! ) She doesn't have a very big vocabulary, I think she may have a speech delay actually. But she's very willing to point, pull, show you what she wants. Of course, the other theory is that everyone basically talks for her

[limboland la la]

I think the point to signing is communication. I found the signs useful as a reinforcement to what my daughter was trying to say. She'd use the same sound over and over for a word but I wouldn't have recognized it as quickly if she didn't have the signs reinforcing what she was attempting to say. Like your child, my daughter stopped signing words that she knew we could understand without the sign. Point being, why sign if your caregiver already understands?

[mbm]

Despite my best efforts, DD never signed. I tried for months to get her to sign "more" and "all done." She would watch me with a very serious expression but would NOT do it. The last time I tried, at about 14 months, she smiled brightly and said "all done!" And that was the end of signing.