Look At Him Go!

I have been teaching a Mommy and Me class for the last three weeks. Eight mommies and their babies, ranging in age from 3 weeks to ten months old. This is my first class with little ones, having only done classes with children who can run and take things out of my bag of tricks.

It's been fun, even though there hasn't been much more action from the babies besides kicking, getting excited and smiling when mom signs.

That is, until this past Monday. The oldest little guy, who has begun walking all over the place, decided to walk around stealing snack containers. I asked him, "Are you looking for more?" I signed "more" to him while asking, and to everyone's astonishment, he responded with the sign for "more." What a smart cookie!

Baby Steps 2 Communication

Last summer I led a discussion at my Mother's and More group about the benefits of signing with infants and young children. My friend Karen attended the meeting as my guest. The talk was well received, and we were both surprised at the number of people who were actually interested in the topic.

It was, as Oprah says, an "A-Ha Moment."

So Karen and I had a little business meeting about what it might take to get something like this off the ground. Karen already had her own interpreting agency, Northern Indiana Communication Exchange, Inc. She did a little research, and I did a little research, and we checked out different companies that had teaching tools for a venture like ours. We found Sign 2 Me, and the rest is history.

We both became certified presenters through the Sign2Me company, and Karen added a couple of others who were interested in teaching classes, and we found a place to hold classes.

Jump ahead to this year...

Karen recently decided to throw this area of the business over to me to take care of. So I came up with a catchy little name, and have been trying to market like crazy. Registration numbers have been slow since our first classes last fall, but I am hoping that will change.

Signing with preverbal hearing children is a no-brainer, really. It helps them develop early communication before their spoken language is ready to develop, cuts down on frustration and tantrums as a result. Not to mention that research has shown that it does NOT hinder spoken language development, but rather enhances it. Add to that the benefits of developing better literacy skills, larger spoken vocabularies, higher IQ scores, and signing is a recipe for success academically. And learning through the classes is not as difficult as some parents think.

Hmmm. Maybe I should do a commercial...

The Hands Are Going Again

Being a Sign Language Interpreter, it was important that I expose my children to ASL as early as possible. Christopher loved it when he was little. His first sign was produced around five months of age. More followed and then the spoken language took off.
Sometime after his first birthday, he got into his head that if I wanted to sign, that was fine, but HE was neither looking at me while I did it, nor making any attempt to use the new signs I was using.

No big deal. It happens, especially when other developmental milestones are popping up.

A few weeks ago, he decided that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to sign after all. So now I have a little parrot. "Mommy, Daddy, hug, cheese, thank you" are all part of his signing dictionary now.


Last week, he surprised Daddy by calling him into the bedroom at bed time. When Daddy showed up, he said and signed, "Daddy, hug please." Suffice it to say that somebody left the room with a big smile on his face.


He's such a cute kid. How'd we get so lucky?

The Birth of BS2C

Baby Steps 2 Communication came about as a result of wanting to provide American Sign Language (ASL) classes to local families and those who work with young children. The goal is to provide fun classes that promote the use of ASL with preverbal hearing infants, children with special needs who are language delayed, and the adults in their lives.

On this blog, you can find information on finding classes in your area, articles on why using ASL is beneficial, links to resources, and general observations based on my experience in the trenches.

So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and learn something new today!