I had been trying to learn a few signs to teach Baby Bear. I started with the signs for "eat," "more," and "all done" to teach her. I haven't been very great at being consistent, but I would use those signs during meal times. In spoken words, Baby Bear has about 6 words in her vocabulary: mama, dada, hi, papa (Grandpa), chassss (Chase Monster cat), and nana (banana). Baby Bear also will babble many sounds to us while playing or while she is sitting down with a book. It really is so cute, she will sit down and read out loud to herself.
Today Papa Bear and I were talking about language development and when she would start "really" talking. I recall from my developmental psychology classes and books that 18-24 months is the language explosion and children begin to speak in one-word sentences. He was excited to hear what she has to say. I was telling him that children will learn to communicate with sign language a little earlier. He wasn't too convinced of that and told me that I had been signing to her for months and she hasn't done it yet. I told him that she can sign "more" and he was doubtful that it was a deliberate sign for communication. We later went out for dinner and Baby Bear was eating a french fry, she signed "more" to indicate she wanted more and she did it consistently throughout the dinner. Papa Bear then retracted his comments from earlier today.
I am so glad that Baby Bear proved her daddy wrong and that she showed him that she could sign and communicate in a non-verbal way. Gotta love my baby girl, she is just so smart!!
Love that you are teaching her sign language. SIL taught both of my nieces some sign language and it really came in handy when we babysat our littlest niece and she was able to tell us when she was hungry and when she wanted more.
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