Sign Language

[lness]

No idea if this is the proper place for this...But here goes.
We have been teaching our DD to sign. She started later than I expected, but can say More, Nurse (milk), Food/Eat, Cheese, ask for diaper change, and she understands a bunch that I've never seen her make. She was picking up new ones left and right for a little while there.
Question is: Is it normal for the language to regress a little bit? "More" was the first thing she learned, and last couple of days she has gone back to using that for EVERYTHING. No matter what - she points at it, and then signs "More" even if she knows the word for it. Can't get her to use the others hardly at all.
Does anyone know - Is this normal behavior, or do we have to go back to square 1 and teach them all over again?

[sapphire_chan]

Normal! And actually pretty smart if you think about it. She's being more efficient, in effect saying "that thing over there, I want some of it".

What you do is model it for her, if she had some and is really getting "more" model "you want MORE MILK? Here is some MILK. Enjoy your MILK" (words in CAPS are also signed, but you should just say the sentence naturally). If she hadn't had some already, "you want MILK?"etc.

What has amazed me about signing is when dd uses signs that we never use. She saw them in a signing video, I did them with her while we watched the video and that was it. Then a month later she's signing "firefighter". So don't get worried about her not using signs she understands or about forgetting to sign yourself. For hearing children, as someone once said (sorry too lazy to source the quote), "signing is a way for your baby to talk to you, not for you to talk to your baby."

[Vegan Princess]

My DD just figured out how to say "more" - and that is almost all she says now. It's almost a little annoying. I'd say it's normal. She can say and sign many things but "more" is her word du jour. Your daughter is probably doing the same thing with the sign. Also, DD did that with the milk sign a while back - when she first started signing she used "milk" to mean "I want" - she doesn't do that anymore though.

Cindy

[lness]

Ah - Thanks! We can just carry on then