Baby sign language

Children learn so much in the first 3 years.  I also find it interesting how much they forget.  For example, watch a two-year-old crawl.  So awkward and uncoordinated, hard to believe that was ever their primary means of locomotion.

Yesterday, I was sorting through old videos of the twins and came across one of Becca using baby sign language.  I had totally forgotten we used to do that.  And so have the twins.  I quizzed them and they don't remember a single sign.   But from 12 to 18 months, signing was huge part of our communication with them.

Before I had kids, I had a long list of all the enriching activities we would do together (mommy and me yoga, baby music classes, rhythm gym, flash cards etc).   The realities of twins forced me to scale back my grand plans.  I was mostly just concentrating on getting through each day, ideally with no emergency room visits.

Baby sign language was one of those things that sounded really cool, but probably too much work.  I thought you had to take a class or buy books.  I was intimidated by blogs where the toddlers were signing 300 to 500 ASL words.  Whoa!  I'm not sure I want to learn a whole new language.  So I forgot about it.  Until the twins started dayhome and my sister (and totally awesome dayhome provider) started teaching them signs.  

Turns out it wasn't a big commitment.  There's lots of signing videos on Youtube or you can just make up our own signs.  The twins really wanted to communicate.  Using a few simple signs helped to ease frustration.

We really only used about 10 signs:

1) More
2) All done
3) Drink (water)
4) Milk
5) Diaper
6) Apple
7) Yogurt
8) Cracker (which they also used for cheerios or any crunchy snack)
9) Nurse
10) Gentle

As you can see, it was mostly food related (my kids love to eat.) But it helped outside the kitchen too.

The two most useful signs were "More" and "All done".   With those, the twins could tell us whenever they liked or disliked something (songs, books, people, activities etc.).   If Charles wanted to be tickled again, he would sign "more" but when he signed "all done" we knew he wanted to stop - even if he was still laughing.   Becca was very hard to read at that age.  She would stare straight ahead with wide eyes and mouth hanging open which meant she was either completely fascinated or completely overwelmed. Before baby signs, we wouldn't know for sure which it was until it was too late.  The "all done" sign avoided many meltdowns.

The twins talked relatively early but it was often difficult to understand them, especially if they were upset.  The signs were much clearer.  For kids who start talking at age 2 or 3, signing would be awesome.    It must be so frustrating for an older toddler not to be able to communicate.  I can totally understand now why some moms would go through the effort of teaching their kids hundreds of signs.

In hindsight I really wish I'd taken some videos of the twins signing before they outgrew it.   This little clip is the only one I could find.  They were about 17 mths and just starting to transition from signs to spoken words. Becca uses the word diaper ("biper") instead of the sign but she is still signing "more" to mooch Cheerios from her dad.