While watching Ellen Degeneres I learned about baby sign language. My girl was just 3 months old but she could already get frustrated so I was super excited about teaching her some useful signs. I found a great website babysignlanguage.com and after reading the tips I decided to start off with the signs for things she was doing the most. I also did not want to do too many at once because she was so little. I figured it would just look like a chaos of hand movements to her and not like a sign. So I started with milk and sleep. Especially the last one seemed very useful as it was hard to tell the difference between just lazy and really tired.
The signs for both activities are really easy but when to sign them was not. When I put my girl to bed I sign sleep. That is easy enough but when she gets milk there just is not a good moment to sign because she gets breastfed. I try to sign right before the feeding, but she does not seem to make that connection and when she is already nursing she cannot see the sign very well, and frankly does not care either. So therefore after a month she signs sleep very well, and milk not at all. I might just drop milk until she is a bit older and start with mommy or something.
But to conclude my first try at baby signlanguage: it is amazing! If you have a baby, you should definitely try it. It cuts down on a lot of crying do to misunderstanding. When my girl signs sleep, I lay her in bed and she will not cry because that is where she wanted to be. Sometimes she does not even sleep right away but plays for a while first. Gives mommy some free time too :) sweet!
Check out part 2 HERE
