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Baby sign language

So this kid never ceases to amaze me. Well, maybe he's my kid so i feel proud at every single thing he does (like pooping, in the potty of course). But just after 13 months old, he started to use sign language to speak back to us (like one day it just clicked i think, just like him deciding that he wanted to walk and was done with crawling). He did the sign for 'eat' when I was prepping dinner and i was amazed! Yes baby, we are going to eat!!

We started signing with him around 8 months old. J and I did a small 'baby sign language' class when he was around that age just to get used to it ourselves. I also learnt that sign language is just like any other language; the American Sign Language (ASL) is different from the Dutch. And the Malay sign language is probably different as well.

To standardize things we decided to follow the Dutch sign language. Meaning i would still be speaking Malay to him, but use the Dutch sign. We went to Baby Gebaren in Almere and the teacher Desiree was really good!

After the sign 'eat' then really quickly came the things that we did over and over for months like drink, bathe, milk, music, ball... All in the span of a couple of days. It really blew me away because all this time he didn't do anything back to us at all. But i guess he was always watching :D

Lennox doing the sign for Horse in Dutch




Here's a list of  other stuff that he can sign now (at 14 months)

more
cry
baby
book
star
car
bicycle
painful (ouch)
sun

bird
dog
cat
sheep
horse
giraffe
rabbit

Of course his signs are not perfect. His flapping bird sign kinda looks like the dog sign. And other animals sometimes are also 'dog'. But it's pretty awesome to watch how when i say a word from a book, he looks at me to check what the sign is.

And it makes life SO much easier when he can tell me what he wants!

Here's a video of him reading the Dutch version of 'Brown Bear Brown Bear what do you see'. Well actually he just likes to look at the picture then go to the next page. It doesn't look like much but the subtle difference in the signs are.

If you're thinking of doing sign with your kids, i would say go for it! Especially before they start being able to vocalise what they want. It sure makes life with a toddler a lot less frustrating!


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