How to Teach Your Baby to Sign

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By oneloved
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Baby Signs

Baby Signs are a great way to help your baby communicate long before they can talk (and cut down on the whining factor, too)! Here's how you can teach your baby to use baby signs.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Baby Signs DVD
Baby Signs Book

Step 1

Take a class together. Check your local community center or college for parent-child baby signing classes, or find an independant instructor listed in your area.
Step 2

Watch a Baby Signs DVD together, doing the signs with your baby as you learn. "My Baby Can Talk" and other educational DVDs are available on Amazon, or possibly at your local library.
Step 3

Read a Baby Signs picture book together, doing the signs as you read it.
Step 4

Be consistent. Whenever you give your baby a drink, show her the corresponding baby sign, then take her hand and help her sign it, too. Do the same for other signs you are trying to teach her. It won't be long before she associates the sign with the object or action, and uses it to communicate what she wants.

Tips & Warnings

Baby Signs can be use to teach your baby manners, too. As soon as your baby is well familiar with the signs for concrete objects (like "cereal"), you can teach him to sign "please" before he gets it, and "thank you" after he receives it.

Resources

Comments

Bfastattiffanys said

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on 11/18/2008 Very helpful article. Trying to work on this with my son but i think i need to be more consistant with him. *****

Aria said

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on 11/12/2008 This is great. Thank you! 5 stars!

on 10/24/2008 One DVD that works really well is Signing Time. They even have two DVDs for babies called Baby Signing Time. Highly recommended. They're really fun and help teach babies/toddlers the basic signs, including please, sorry, and thank you.