Now that Dd is approaching 10 months, it is time to get excited about talking!
Baby sign language requires interlocutors who are actively looking for signs, just like understanding early spoken words requires a lot of attentive listening. With that in mind, in the last month Dd has signed "book," "more," and "milk."
It was exciting to see "book" signed in conjunction with saying "buh buh buh" and looking at a stack of books. This was a few days before Dd reached 9 months, for those of us interested in accuracy :) and at the time his typical babble sound was "bah", not "buh".
I recall that "buh" was a popular early sound for D as well (and probably most kids), though we latched on to the idea of it meaning "bus" given the context of what we saw so often on walks and out our downtown apartment windows.
Jack saw Dd sign "dad" but it has yet to be repeated.
Verbally he has said some joyful "dada" and just the other day "mommy" a few times when he was tired and a little distressed while being cared for by someone else. (I heard it from the other room though).
Dd is quite in to clapping and waving these days. When we walk anywhere near a mirror in our house he starts waving in anticipation of seeing his reflection. He claps (and slaps his knees) while listening to music, but also claps at other times. It's funny to think that the sign for "more" so closely resembles clapping, and when you get down to it the meaning of "more" and bravo or encore are basically the same.
Lastly, a few interesting things I have read about early communication are:
- people sometimes think signing delays verbal speech, but the opposite is true
- bilingualism leads to some early confusion but does not cause delays
- extended pacifier use does lead to later speech
- leaving aside signing, speaking with lots of hand gestures is really good for learning, for babies and everyone else.
- www.parentingscience.com/gestures "Babies exposed to lots of communicative gestures
appear to learn language more quickly, and acquire bigger vocabularies."
- I vividly remember how using gestures helped me understand matrix multiplication in high school.
Baby sign language requires interlocutors who are actively looking for signs, just like understanding early spoken words requires a lot of attentive listening. With that in mind, in the last month Dd has signed "book," "more," and "milk."
It was exciting to see "book" signed in conjunction with saying "buh buh buh" and looking at a stack of books. This was a few days before Dd reached 9 months, for those of us interested in accuracy :) and at the time his typical babble sound was "bah", not "buh".
I recall that "buh" was a popular early sound for D as well (and probably most kids), though we latched on to the idea of it meaning "bus" given the context of what we saw so often on walks and out our downtown apartment windows.
Jack saw Dd sign "dad" but it has yet to be repeated.
Verbally he has said some joyful "dada" and just the other day "mommy" a few times when he was tired and a little distressed while being cared for by someone else. (I heard it from the other room though).
Dd is quite in to clapping and waving these days. When we walk anywhere near a mirror in our house he starts waving in anticipation of seeing his reflection. He claps (and slaps his knees) while listening to music, but also claps at other times. It's funny to think that the sign for "more" so closely resembles clapping, and when you get down to it the meaning of "more" and bravo or encore are basically the same.
Lastly, a few interesting things I have read about early communication are:
- people sometimes think signing delays verbal speech, but the opposite is true
- bilingualism leads to some early confusion but does not cause delays
- extended pacifier use does lead to later speech
- leaving aside signing, speaking with lots of hand gestures is really good for learning, for babies and everyone else.
- www.parentingscience.com/gestures "Babies exposed to lots of communicative gestures
appear to learn language more quickly, and acquire bigger vocabularies."
- I vividly remember how using gestures helped me understand matrix multiplication in high school.
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