Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Some of you may know we've been signing for Paela since she was born. We don't know a lot of sign language, but what we had read assured us that babies know even less; that even "baby talk" sign language would be picked up by our child. And so we tried it, signing "milk" and "more" whenever we fed her from newborn age on.

Wayne can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was around 8-9 months that we finally thought she could understand what we were signing to her. We would do the sign while saying the word, so it is hard to know for sure whether it was the vocal or visual cue that clued her in. She started doing the "up" sign around then, when she wanted to be taken out of her high chair after eating. We were excited and were sure more signs would soon follow. We were wrong.

She started pointing at things; it got to be harder to tell if she was signing "up" or just pointing. It took another month or so before Paela tried communicating with another sign...this time "all done." But it was less frequent. Her "all done" indicator tended to be turning her head and throwing food on the ground instead of doing the sign. At least she was communicating, right?

One afternoon around 11 months we hung out at a park where the airplanes flew so low coming in for a landing. Every time one flew overhead, we would excitedly point it out and do the airplane sign. By the end of the outing Paela was doing the airplane sign too. That was a fun thing to see.

Fast forward to her birthday. It seemed like a present to us when I put her in her high chair and she did the "more" sign. Granted, her "more" was not perfect form, but she seemed to be doing it with purpose. So I asked back if she wanted "more" to "eat", and she did it again. The next morning she did the "more" sign again, about 30 minutes before I would normally feed her lunch. I got some goldfish for her and she was so excited she did the "more" sign again and again. I'm pretty sure she thinks "more" is the same thing as "eat", but hey, it's communicating one way or another.

The next week she added the sign (and verbalization) for "ball" and "book". She also did the sign for "milk", and is doing "all done" more often. What amuses me is how much the "signs" she does are just babbling. Or mixed up. When she gets really excited, we'll see a hand wave "bye" and a "milk" and "all done" all rolled into one. Which does she mean? Context helps.

Book and ball look remarkably the same, and Paela's versions look even similar. She looks like she's clapping her hands once. They sound the same since she tends to leave the "k" and "l" off when she says the words. Is she signing "book" or "ball" or just clapping for us? Again, context helps. She might be looking at her book or ball. Or reaching or pointing. Or maybe we're holding the book and she's eagerly signing "book" for us so we'll read to her. Or she just put the circle into her shape sorter and clapped for herself like we do. Context helps.

Who knew her first signs would be so much like baby babble? It's hard to be certain exactly what she's saying with these first little words and first little signs and when she really means what we think she means, but having both visual and verbal cues gives us that much more insight into how she communicates. We had to wait longer than I expected to see her first signs, but I'm so excited to see them. Now she knows the sign for "dog" as well, and she recognizes the sign for "water" though we haven't seen her try it yet. Hopefully we'll recognize her approximations more and more as they come.