She can sign milk!!

Moni - posted on 06/24/2010

Use signs for things she is interested in. I think my daughter's first sign was "dog" as she just loves our dog. At 19 months old now she prefers to use signs for some things and verbalizes others, and does a combo for yet other words! I saw an explosion of signing and understanding when she was about 13 months old and it's kept up since then. She loves learning signs now for animals and her favorite foods. Every time we saw an animal I would perform the sign and say the word, same with her favorite foods. For a bit every fruit was "banana", but there's more comprehension there now. Keep up the good work!

Jenny - posted on 06/13/2010

I would concentrate on learning and teaching the signs for anything your child is particularly interested in. My daughter is 16 months old and is beginning to use color signs. She doesn't know what the colors are yet, but if I tell her she is holding a green crayon she will sign green. If you go for walks, use the signs for anything you might see ... bird, tree, flower, grass...
Sounds like you are on the right track.

Marisa - posted on 05/31/2010

It sounds like most of the signs you've been doing are food-related, which I think is a great place to start. But, if she's realizing that she can use sign to communicate to you, you might want to expand beyond that to other words that might be helpful to her. Do you have a dog? Try dog. (That was one of my daughter's first 5 signs). Also, we found "more" and "all done" really helpful - for food and for anything else we were doing. I think adding in pretty much any everyday thing (diaper change, bath, toys, library - whatever you do regularly with her) would help broaden her awareness of naming things.

Maria - posted on 05/14/2009

Well, the fact that she's starting to use sign and understands signs your using sounds like you are using it consistently and in a meaningful way so I wouldn't worry that she is not using the sign 100% appropriately. I would just take these times that she is looking to communicate and help her learn the signs meaningful for the activity. For example, if she's playing give her the sign for the toy she's using or when she's eating crackers show her the sign for cracker.



My daughter went through a phase when she was really starting to get that sign was communication and said "thank you" for everything...she would thank me for her diaper change, putting her in her car seat (which she actually hated), giving her a snack, etc...it was really cute since it made her look ultra-polite! I have also had parents whom I have taught baby sign to say their little ones have done similar things.



So, keep up what you are doing and enjoy! It sounds like she is on her way to really getting it!