I teach my kids American Sign Language. Karaia has hearing loss in her right ear. Her left is just fine. We found this out before we left the hospital when she was born. Learning some ASL and teaching it to her was a natural decision for us. Because of that, I have taught all my kids to sign. They have all been able to "voice" their wants, frustrations, and desires to me LONG before they could verbalize them.
Why this walk down memory lane?
On Tues, February 5th, for historical purposes, Tennyson signed his first word at 7 1/2 months. As with the other two children, "more" was his first sign. I did not immediately run to blog this all too important milestone as one would assume a proud mother to do because I had to be sure. Was he just learning to clap? Was it perhaps mere coincidence meaning nothing? Am I reading too much into this?
Happily, he continues to use it at the appropriate time and place. He also learned to clap when we say, "yeah!!!" due to the fact that more and yeah are the same palm to palm gesture right now. But he reserves the right to clap yeah for exciting, mom is letting me play with the remote, moments. I have also seen evidence of the "all done" sign. But we must run more tests before we can commit to anything conclusive.
This is the absolute best part, pay-day moments, of raising a child. To see them learn something you have so diligently taught for months (Day one for this kid-o). It makes every hard day seem fuzzy and unimportant.
2 comments:
Hooray for Tennyson and mommy!! It's all going to snowball from here!
I taught Gentry sign as well. I was super flaky about it, so when he signed milk as a nine month old I was ecstatic. I was amazed at his ability to learn sign.
We only taught him 5-10 signs and then he started speaking words we could understand. I think his first was cheese, promptly followed by mama and dada.
Congratulations.
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