[devildogwife]

A couple months ago, Cameron's speech pathologist gave us a 'Baby Signing Time' DVD to try watching with him. He has permanent vocal cord paralysis (left, open) from his 3rd open heart surgery. He does make some noise, but only really uses 2 words. They think that because of the paralysis and his lung issues that he just can't make certain sounds. We really needed something to help him communicate and this has worked SO well.

He now knows and uses around 15 signs and he picked them up SO fast. I was a bit of a skeptic before seeing how much the DVD has helped Cameron. Every week he is picking up another sign. The sign that has been most helpful is hurt. He's able to let me know when his teeth are bothering him and it is so helpful.

I know Withay has mentioned Baby Signing time. Anyone else had great success with them too? I wish we would've started them much sooner, but they're still really helping now.

[emtb79]

I havent used Baby Signing Time DVD's but, I have used the Original Signing Time DVD's that are made by the same lady. My daycare kids love to watch them and teach their parents the new signs they learned. We check them out from the library here. I own the Signing time volumes 1-9. We havent watched them in a while. The favorite volume is the farm dvd. All of my kids are speaking and babies could tell me what they wanted before a year old.

Check your local library out and see if you can check some more out for free.

[Magic_Hat]

We haven't used those specific ones but we signed with our daughter and it was great. Really helped cut down on the frustration. We do have a Baby Einstein signing video which she still likes to watch (at 2.5) and we have a book of signs. I was amazed at how quickly she picked up signs.

[Stormster]

I just watched the video and taught him like 7 signs which I think helped a lot.

I could have taught him more I'm sure but we started late and he started speech and they told us to stop.

[mommamarci]

My Cameron knew and used about 75 signs by 20 months of age. We loved the videos! It was so great that he could communicate with us.

Spencer, on the other hand is 19 months, not talking, and refuses to sign...

[Whirled_Peas]

My son knew 95 signs before he became a proficient speaker. Although we had several books about signing, the best dictionary was Amazon.com: Teach Your Tot to Sign: The Parents' Guide to American Sign Language (9781563683114): Stacy A. Thompson, Valerie Nelson-Metlay (Illustrator): Books

[reetoreet]

We also used this with great success! I do agree that it helps to cut down on frustration. Lily is 19 months now and she is talking a lot but she will still sign the words she can say, or she says the words and signs with them. That's how I began to understand her language, actually!

[Lovebug]

We signed with both our children as well....our older son had a severe speech delay and it helped TONS.

[KarenInCa]

Reading this thread makes me think of the theme song to "Signing Time with Alex and Leah".
Our daughter was adopted when she was 16.5 months old. We knew she would not be used to anyone talking to her in English, and also knew that she would be a toddler with very few words in Mandarin. I was hesitant about using sign language with her because I didn't want it to hender her ability to understand and speak English to us. But actually, it freed up a lot of what otherwise would have been very frustrating time for her.
We used the DVD from 16.5 months old till she was 24 months old, and would reinforce the sign words as we spoke them to her. She used the sign when she needed to, and it was wonderful.
We taught her just the basics; more, eat, drink, water, milk, thank you, boy, girl, ball, cat, dog, happy, sad....and a few others. "More" was the most difficult because it doesn't represent anything tangible. But she caught on, and the words were very helpful for us and for her.
After we had stopped using sign with her, when she was almost 3, we went to the beach, and as I stood on the shore with her, and the water left our feet, she signed "More" "water". She knew how to say, "more water" but she signed it. I was amazed that she actually put the sentence together when we weren't talking about wanting drinking water, but wanting more ocean waves to come to us.
I realized at that moment also that sign actually helped her ability to speak and know words, because we were able to capitalize on her memory capacity with communication.
I would strongly suggest using sign for at least basic words with toddlers, even when they don't have language barriers, speech or hearing challenges.

[OakShannon]

Leah - That's great! You must be so happy to be able to talk with your little guy! And I'll bet he's thrilled to be able to talk to you, too.

I tried teaching David some signs and we checked the DVD out of the library, too. He had limited interest in them, though. He learned a few signs. The ones that were most useful to him were, "More" which he used to mean "I want . . ." (He would point and sign "more.") And "All done." Which he used to mean anything he didn't want or if he wanted to be put down, etc. But until he was 18 months or so, I think talking was low on his priority list, so he wasn't really into signing, either. Somebody flipped a switch when he was 19 months old and now he's a little chatter box. I don't think he stops talking all day long! So he was just on his own timetable and sign wasn't going to change it. But I can see how sign would be a wonderful help for kids who have a speech delay or who are learning the language.

What's interesting to me is that he rarely used any signs but those two. But now that he's talking, he'll sometimes use sign for emphasis. For example, when he's hungry, he'll say AND sign "eat."

[mama_again]

I totally recommend using these videos... we have been using them almost 2 years as our punkin is almost 3. She is still using sign with her speech. We have learned so much and when she couldn't form words, she used sign all the time... She especially uses, more more more...
excellent videos....

We are still watching them from time to time as we have a library of them...

You will be astounded at his growth with these... Blessings to you...

[devildogwife]

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to reply to my own thread. A little girl here, the same age as my son with the same heart defect died today. She was at home doing good after some really tough battles. She's the 4th hypoplastic left heart that I've known who has died since Cameron was born. 25 years ago, we all would have been told to take our babies home to die. I'm SO glad that today we have options and our children do have a chance, but sometimes it doesn't seem like enough. Just so sad. Heart moms feel the loss of each child very personally.

I'm glad everyone else has had such positve experiences with signing too. It definitely IS wonderful to finally be able to communicate with Cameron. Vocal cord paralysis has affected so many areas for him. More than I could have imagined. So the fact that this is working so well is great.

Marci, I feel you on the refusing to do both. Even though we'd been faithfully signing to him for months, he would not sign for anything. Finally, I found his motivation. He ate a sweet potato puff in July and loved it. I signed more for him and he finally picked up and signed more. He is now even putting 3 signs together to form a sentence. It took him a long time to get there.

I appreciate every sharing their experiences!

[aclee]

My imp would slap my hands when I tried to sign with him. He eventually made up one sign of his own (for NO...big surprise)...other than that, he refused to sign at all. I want to try again with Matty though I really feel like it would help Ty's frustration levels if he knew a few signs but he still refuses...

[OakShannon]

Originally Posted by aclee

My imp would slap my hands when I tried to sign with him. He eventually made up one sign of his own (for NO...big surprise)...other than that, he refused to sign at all. I want to try again with Matty though I really feel like it would help Ty's frustration levels if he knew a few signs but he still refuses...

Tyler has SUCH a mind of his own! When you start with Matty, you should tell Tyler, no! No signing for Tyler. Tyler doesn't sign.

He'll probably sign Romeo and Juliet for you.