I have been working on learning “Baby’s First 100 Signs” in American Sign Language (ASL) from this site. I had read about baby sign language in various places but it wasn’t until it came up in conversation with my friend, Shannon, that I really gave it any serious though. She taught it to her six-year-old sign when she was a baby. Researching it lately it has apparently become quite the fad.

I hate fads. However if there is some validity to this and it will give me an edge in communicating with Damian and prevent a tiny bit of frustration, I am willing to set aside my fad issue for him. Funny how parenthood changes our tolerance levels. So baby sign…

The logic behind baby sign is that an infant develops the fine muscles in their hands before they develop the ones required for speech, this means, theoretically, that they are able to communicate with us (adults) far before they are able to speak. There are studies to show that it does not delay speech either, which was my initial concern. I have spoken to several mothers who taught their infants sign, and it doesn’t seem to be as crazy as I initially thought. When it comes to me investigating if things like this work I look more towards other parents then scientific studies. Experience is an awesome teacher.

To teach Damian sign I must first learn the signs myself and then use them in conjunction with my normal speech. For example if I say mommy, I will make the sign as I say the word. Over time Damian will begin to associate that sign with the word and use it when he wants to. This does make sense I suppose, Damian is already beginning to imitate things that Michael and I do after all, the next step if for him to consciously use them, to communicate.

I am just using basic “need signs” with Damian at the moment. For example, when he starts giving indications that he needs nurse I sign “milk” and then nurse him. Consistency is the key and I sign milk every time I nurse him. So far I only use five signs with him, milk, sleep, diaper, mommy, daddy. I do not want to use too many with him yet because I don’t want to overload him with too many concepts he doesn’t currently need (such as food item names, like apple, since he doesn’t eat them yet.) Still, I am working on learning the 100 basics and am going to start using them with Michael even if Damian isn’t watching, eventually we will begin to use them with him.

So we will see where this experiment goes, at 6 weeks old Damian is not signing yet and probably won’t for several months. If he picks it up, great! If not that is fine too, I will have learned some ASL!