“Is someone hungry? You want a snack, sweetie?”
“Wahhhh, wahhh!!” your toddler wails.
“Oh, not hungry? Would you like your milk cup?”
You set your toddler’s cup on their highchair, and within seconds it’s been knocked to the floor, its contents spilling everywhere. Does this scenario sound all too familiar to you? As nannies and parents, this is a common scene we see daily. Wouldn’t life be a little less stressful if you knew exactly what your non-verbal baby or toddler wanted when they asked? A great way to help is by teaching your little one baby sign language. There are some great tips, tricks and courses to teach your child how to ask for specific things and express their feelings with baby signs.
Baby sign language can be started as early as 6 or 7 months old. It’s proven to be successful because a child’s ability to use their hands develops much earlier than the muscles needed in their vocal cords and tongue for speech.
You may wonder, what signs you should use? It, in fact, doesn’t matter exactly what signs you choose to teach and apply to your child’s daily life. As long as they are recognizable and consistently used to describe the assigned feelings or objects, you can choose to use signs from American Sign Language, or even make up your own! The most important things are consistency, patience, and persistence. It may take two to three months to start seeing results.
Many worry that by using signs they will be holding back their child’s verbal language development. Studies have shown, however, that if used daily along with normal conversation, signing has resulted in larger vocabularies by 2 years of age than children who haven’t been using signs.
As you can see, baby sign language can reduce your child’s (and your) frustration, provide a fun learning experience for you both, and encourage early language development. There are many programs, books and classes offered to help assist in teaching your baby sign language.
Tiny Hands Learning 
Charlotte’s Best Nanny is excited to be offering a Baby Sign Language Class from Tiny Hands Learning, on February 24th as a part of our Donuts and Discussions Series. This valuable class will go over basic baby signs, and we are happy to offer this class at $10.00 a person! If you are interested in learning more about teaching your baby or nanny kids sign language, please, feel free to register via following this link: February Baby Signs Class
-Written by: Elizabeth
