I’m no writer

I’ve decided to start blogging about things in our day to day lives. If you should happen to come across this blog and are part of the grammar police, just save it. I know I’m not always grammatically correct, you don’t have to point it out.

Teaching hearing babies to sign.

While pregnant with the twins, I did quite a bit of reading. Of course, most of it had to do with childbirth and parenting. I came across several articles about the benefits of teaching hearing babies to sign. After some research, I decided this was something I would try. After all, what could it hurt?

Jamie Burke, at About.com has an interesting article Sign Language – Baby Signing. It’s a very interesting article with great resources.

I started signing to my kids at around 4 months of age. This is when they started eating cereal. Everytime I would feed them, I would sign the word eat. At around 6 months of age, they started getting excited when I would sign the word “eat”. By 7 months, they were actually signing eat themselves. By the time they were a year old, they were signing and speaking in three – five word sentences.

It’s amazing how most children who are bilingual usually start speaking than children who are not bilingual. This is true for every language except sign language. When a baby learns to speak, he/she uses the left hemisphere of the brain. With sign language, both the right and left hemispheres are used. This results in the brain building more synapses.

Of course, I am no expert, but for my children, I believe sign language has been a great benefit. Before the age of two, my daughter was already reading car tags and by 2 1/2 my son had somehow memorized a number of birthdates. To this day, they continue to amaze me with the things they learn and know.