Faith signs 3 words

I've been intrigued by the idea of teaching Faith to sign since reading about it on Baby Center (click here to see article). However, I had not taken any actions to learn or find out more until my friend, Tam, demonstrated with her daughter how to sign a few common words.

I decided after seeing her daughter signed, to try to teach Faith those 3 words that I learned, namely; "Please", "Thank You" and "More". That was probably about 1 1/2 months ago. When I was telling my mom about teaching Faith to sign, she laughed at me and said that it would likely be a situation whereby I would be the only person to understand Faith.

Admittedly, I wasn't really consistent in teaching or using it with Faith. It was more a situation of me teaching her to do it whenever I remembered to. Faith didn't seem too interested in signing with me at all. Neither did she showed any indication that she had the faintest idea about what I was trying to do. Or so I thought.

Two weeks ago, as I was eating my usual morning cornflakes, she crawled up to me (as usual)and grunted to me to give her some. I asked her to sign "please" politely before I would give her some. And she did, rubbing her tummy in a circular motion after I popped the cornflakes into her mouth. I gave her more cornflakes and told her again to say "please". And she did a few times, although each time, she signed it after I've given her the cornflakes instead of the other way around. But, it confirmed a fact -- Faith could sign!

To say that I was pleased and thrilled was an understatement. I was absolutely floored by the idea of Faith signing back to me and knowing that she had actually understood whatever I had taught her.

Since then, she had almost consistently signed the 3 words to us whenever we asked her questions (for instances when she could reply using the word "more") or when prompted to say "please" and "thank you".

I've also developed my own sign for the word "open" and she's used it to great effect, especially when she's asking me to open her container for cornflakes and raisins :) Now, I'm spurred to teach her more words to sign. After all, I think Faith's going to be a late talker as she hasn't even called Louis or myself "mummy" or "papa" yet.

I wished I had researched a little more about teaching baby sign languages after the Baby Center article so that I could have started much earlier with Faith. Nonetheless, I think its still not too late to teach her now. So this week, I'm going to pop into Kinnokuniya and get me a book or two to expand our vocabulary on more words we can sign :)