Baby Sign Language Videos and Screen Time

[sky_and_lavender]

It's been recommended by several sources that babies avoid screen time completely until at least age 2. For parents that are teaching/have taught their babies ASL, what are your thoughts on baby sign videos versus plain old parental teaching (when the parenting is not fluent in sign)?

(I ask as a parent who's been working with my baby without videos but seen friends who have had a lot of success with videos... Yet I'm loathe to introduce my older infant to TV entertainment.)

[sky_and_lavender]

bump!

[jenfl]

Our DD signed great and we never used videos. I have no idea why you would! We just used whatever sign(s) we were introducing in our daily conversation, and DD picked them up. We knew some signs, looked some up, made up others (like "lizard" -- L shape with your hand and wiggle it), and DD made up some (like "smoothie" -- banging two fists together -- and no, I have no idea where that came from! ).

Signing should be easy and fit into your life -- it's not an academic thing.

[jenfl]

Oh, and I wouldn't worry about "teaching ASL". DD dropped her signs naturally as she learned to talk and now, at 3 years old, barely remembers them. Teaching the correct ASL signs wouldn't have made her fluent in ASL at this point unless we'd kept it up regularly. We just used whatever "signs" worked for us.

[Snapdragon]

jenfl that is good advice! Recently I was saying to dh- it would be kind of cool to teach ds sign language- except for the fact that we don't know it! lol.
I thought about making up our own signs and it is nice to hear that this works for you.

[jenfl]

Originally Posted by Katie34

jenfl that is good advice! Recently I was saying to dh- it would be kind of cool to teach ds sign language- except for the fact that we don't know it! lol.
I thought about making up our own signs and it is nice to hear that this works for you.

Also, there's tons of information online about signing. So if there was something that we wanted to introduce to DD (the sign for giraffe, say), we'd just look it up. And then, of course, she'd give her own spin on it if she couldn't manage to "pronounce" it just right.

Most of DD's signs were animals (it's always been an obsession of hers). And those are great signs -- most are easy and descriptive. Of course, we had the basics, too -- more, eat, drink, book, sleep, done -- but lots and lots and LOTS of animal signs.

[cristeen]

We do use the videos. He's been watching BST since he was 4 mos old. It's the only screen time he gets. He is not signing yet, although he does recognize them, but we will be continuing it as he gets older. He has 2 aunties who sign, and mommy and daddy consider it to be like any other language skill... a good skill to have in life (and we're both learning with him). We will also be introducing him to languages other than ASL, it's just that ASL was the most useful one to intro first.

[twinergy]

A great place to look up signs online is YouTube, especially the MySmartHands Channel. I have made custom playlists of words I want to learn so I can teach them to my kids. Also if you go to mysmarthands.ca you can get some instructional videos very inexpensively, most are under $2. They are home videos designed to teach the parents ASL, not entertain the kids. My DD does enjoy watching them, but she can take it or leave it. We had to stop Signing Time because she was having tantrums if I wouldn't let her watch them whenever.

[Blueone]

I have the Signing Time DVD's that a friend lent me. We only started them once he was 1. We also don't play them more than one time a day and we don't always do it every day. I do sign to him though for the basics.

I've found that he loves watching the kids and it gives me a bit of a break which really REALLY helps after he's eaten because he makes a mess. It also makes it easy for me to clean him off, normally he throws a tantrum when I do that.

However, he has only done a few signs but now says the words in his cute baby way like "a du" for All Done. He used to sign more, but stopped. He doesn't really say the word though. He will sign eat sometimes when I say "let's eat" same with milk. I will keep trying and all, but he's a talker.

I do like them for a break though.

[sky_and_lavender]

Thanks for your thoughts on this! Since a friend of mine also mentioned her daughter throwing tantrums when not allowed to watch the videos on demand and I still feel uncertain about giving my daughter screen time (though I doubt 30 minutes a day would make a huge difference...), I think for now I'm going to avoid showing her videos, but maybe I'll check some out for myself. YouTube seems like a good idea, and I've found a couple of other sites, too.