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Summary: The most rewarding experience of parenting!
Review: Communicating with your baby/toddler before they can speak is SO AMAZING! The author discusses how children learn signs early in life (like waving bye-bye) and how this concept can be expanded to incorporate few to numerous additional signs to have "conversations" with your child. My first child learned over 50 signs by age 15 months (such as dog, cat, rain, snow, and the most helpful sign 'more' to tell us when she needed more juice or more crackers...). She is now 2 and we have a 6-month old son; she is already starting to show him the baby signs so that he can learn them, too. This is a very easy book to read; busy parents can review it in one night and understand the concepts. It has excellent baby sign suggestions/illustrations in the back of the book.
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Summary: How do other parents communicate with their toddlers?!
Review: My mother who works at UCD gave my sister and I each a copy of this book before our babies were born. Now the cousins (two months apart) at ages 17 and 19 months are prolific baby-signers! Since 8 months when my son first made the sign for "dog," I have been amazed at his level of comprehension. Don't think for a minute that your toddler doesn't understand you...they do, they just can't respond with words. My niece and my son have more baby signs than I can count, and they also (now) have lots of words and a litany of animal sounds. They have created at least as many signs as we have taught them...their additions are the names of favorite songs, books, people and of course their favorite video the "Wiggles" (and if the Wiggles aren't familar to you, by all means, check out these energetic and creative dads from Austrailia). Baby Signs is well worth your money.
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Summary: Uses ASL, easy to read
Review: I like this book because it uses ASL and I was easily able to scan/read it in one sitting. I think teaching a baby ASL over baby signs is very important because baby signs will only be useful til they are 2-3yrs wherebys ASL will be useful throughout their life and they will be able to communicate to deaf children. The book shows how to do the signs and also outlines ideal settings to use the signs to communicate with your baby. My son is 6 months old now and loves it when I sign 'Mommy loves you' and 'car/drive' to him. I also like how there is an dictionary section with about 150 signs; their is also illustrations of signs in appropiate areas of the book (i.e. in "which signs to start with" section it shows how to do Milk, More... Signs so you don't have to go to the dictionary to see how to do each.
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Summary: Opens a window into your child's mind...
Review: I first read this book a year ago when my daughter was 13 months old. The book was so easy to understand and gave such wonderul examples that I was able to start using it immediately. Afer about one week of using Baby Signs my daugther learned about 5 signs, after two months she was up to 30 signs. Within six months she was using over 80 signs! It was incredible to REALLY understand what she was trying to tell me. Her first "sentence" was at 14 months when she signed "merry-go-round, water", which was her way way of telling me that there was water under the merry-go-round! She was able to start a conversation with us by using signs. This book confirms what is "normal" for Baby Signers. My daughter's signing and language skills have followed exactly as the author's research has stated. She is now 2 years old and most of her signs have been replaced by a wonderful vocabulary. Even though the signs are nearly gone the closeness that we have created will last a lifetime. Thank you!
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Summary: AMAZING!!! WISH I WOULD HAVE READ THIS 16 YEARS AGO!!
Review: I am the mother of 3 and a foster parent. I have an 18 month old child that is delayed...while working with her OT and PT providers I learned about "Baby Signs". I was sceptical but decided to buy the book just to see what it was all about. I read it from cover-to-cover in two days, it was very interesting! I started signing to the baby right away, focusing primairly on the "eat" (finger tips to lips) sign and the "more" (fingers touching thumbs on both hands and tapping fingers together) sign...I was so surprised when she signed "eat" the very first day!!! She made up her own sigh for "more" (palm up, clenching and relaxing fingers)...the second day when she was playing in the living room she suddenly made her "more" sign followed by the "eat" sign!!! I was so excited!!! I grabbed her up, put her in her highchair and opened two jars of baby food...SHE ATE BOTH JARS!!! She was hungry AND able to TELL me that she wanted to eat without her crying and me playing the guessing game...IT WAS GREAT!! What a breakthrough, until now baby has been totally non-"verbal" (except for the word daddy)!! I wish I would have known about baby signs when my first child was tiny (16 years ago) even though he was an early talker (full sentenses at 10 months old)...it is so wonderful to be able to communicate...to KNOW what baby wants without the frustration of them screaming and you trying frantically to guess what it is that they want or need. I highly reccomend this book to everyone who wishes to communicate early with a child.
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Summary: Fun to read but inadequate instructions for teaching sign
Review: I read Baby Signs and Signing with Your Baby by Joseph Garcia. I do NOT recommend Baby Signs but highly recommend Signing with Your Baby by Joseph Garcia instead for the following reasons:
1. Mr. Garcia has a clearer plan for teaching sign language
2. Mr. Garcia teaches ASL rather than modified or invented signs used in Dr. Acredolo's book
3. Mr. Garcia has better illustrated sign instructions
4. Mr. Garcia's books is simply shorter and more succinct, more meat and less fluff than Dr. Acredolo's book Dr. Acredolo's book is fun to read because of all the anecdotes about children using signs, and I understand the spirit of her book for using simplified or invented signs for babies. However, it was unsatisfying to be taught invented signs instead of true ASL. If learning another language, would one want to learn the baby babble version of that language? For me, the answer is clearly no. Using Sign with Your Baby in conjunction with a class or videos such as the excellent Signing Time series provides an effective way to teach baby and parents sign language.
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Summary: Baby Signs
Review: To any who read the review RE:Holly Cox, Nov.10,2003.
I am the mother of a 1 1/2yr. daughter. I also know signing and as the result of reading an article in Parents Magasine reguarding "signing with babies", I began an experiment to see wether signing would be an assett to a toddler. This article highlighted the lowering of frustration levels with increased communication, AS WELL as, an increased oral vocabulary due to the repetition of verbal reenforcement associated with the use of the sign. The experiment was more successful than I had expected and my daughter could soon communicate her needs in situations that were a previously source of frustration to her:" down, finished, drink, eat, up, more". It wasn't long before her interests expanded and with them her oral AND signing vocabulary. Although she does not have the fine motor coordination to manipulate many of the intricicies of advanced signing, she is eager to keep her active mind occupied with visually learning signs dear to her little heart. Signing has not stinted her oral vocabulary, ON THE CONTRARY, she is an extremely verbal child for her age (she is my 4th, I know the difference) and, although credit immersion in early reading/and natural linguistic aptitude to a portion of her development, If I had to rate "SIGNING" as a stepping stone in her growth I would hold it in the same place of influence as these other factors. If you wonder what I mean by early talker here is a sample list of words that she knows in both sign AND oraly: eat, drink, bottle, shower, toothbrush, wash, CD, jacket, shoes, rain, snow, twinkle, star, cold, up, down, finished, come, dog, cat, bird, chicken, upstairs, sleep, sit, moon, stop, patience, not yours, mine, help, water, wave, flower, funny, car, music,....there are more oral words in her vocabulary. OH YEAH, Holly (and any new moms out there worried about slow talkers)....if indeed a 2 1/2 year old is not speaking and clings to signs, it may be that that child is just not yet ready to jump into talking, yet...it's no biggie, that child WILL talk in good time unless there is some delay at the root. ...Who are we to judge another persons security zone. If you suspect a delay SEE A DR. IMMEDIATELY.
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Summary: Super Book
Review: I used Baby Signs to communicate with my daughter who is now 5, and loved it. I started when she was about 6 months old and kept it going until she could talk - and she had a great vocabulary once she started talking verbally. I did not use every sign in the book since I couldn't remember all of them, but all I did were very helpful. We now have a new baby boy, and I am going to use the book the same way I did the first time. Use what you need from it and it really works.
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Summary: Baby Signs
Review: Interesting theory. The parents I know who use baby signs have done so because their children are "late" talkers. I may be more convinced that Baby Signs helps children become better communicators if I had run across children who had decent vocabularies & whose parents signed to them when they were younger. Unfortunately I've seen parents use this as a crutch for 2- 2 1/2 year olds who aren't talking. So I guess it has it's place.
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Summary: Communication is KEY even before a child can talk
Review: This book has given us the tools to introduce a new effective form of communication with our baby. The tone of the book is friendly, supportive and easy to understand. We found the specific signs easy to model for our son. He seemed to pick it up so very quickly. Our 4 year-old daughter, although very capable verbally, also likes to talk to her baby brother with the sign language. We would also like to recommend another friendly book full of wit and wisdom that continues to clearly demonstrate how to communicate more effectively (with words) to the next age group called 'The Pocket Parent'. This book explains how important it is to give toddlers the words for their feelings early on which goes hand in hand with Baby Signs. The Pocket Parent gives hundreds of fast answers to handling most of the most challenging behaviors of a 2-5 year (i.e. tantrums, bedtime and mealtime refusals, I hate you's, gimmees, and whining). Both sanity saving books have lowered the frustration level of both parents and children in our family. We are so grateful that we found 2 books that have taught us specific ways of how to communicate much more effectively with our young children. Consider both reasonably priced books for your personal library.
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