First Pick-Up Line

[dr_pretentious]

Gareth toddled across the floor at Starbucks, hands gripping furniture all the way, to check out the five-month-old girl in the car seat. She gazed up at him with dazzling blue eyes.

"Good!" he said. "Good!"

I'm pretty sure that's the first time he's spoken a recognizable word to a fellow child, though he's babbled to his cousins and to the other kids at the library's weekly Mother Goose Hour.

Gareth's recognizable spoken vocabulary so far consists of:
kitty
cat
daddy
mommy
hi
red
up
yummy
good

And in ASL:
music
light
ceiling fan
phone
more
milk (nurse/hug)
food
all done

My favorite baby sign language gurus advise parents to choose 12 signs to start with, half signs about things babies are interested in (Ooh, a ceiling fan! Hey, I want some music!), and half about the things parents want their babies to be able to give them straight answers about (Do you want more food, or are you all done?). Gareth's ASL vocabulary is neatly half and half, just as the gurus predicted if I followed their techniques.

There are a lot of other words he seems to understand, but I never know how much of that is wishful thinking. I think he's figured out this week that Gareth is a word just for him, whereas baby names a category that includes him and others like him. Impossible to be sure.

Comments

[theunveiling.livejournal.com]

Do you know if Signing Smart available in stores or only from their website?

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

I love your icon!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Their introductory book is available in bookstores, as are some of their little laminated Diaper Bag Dictionary booklets. Everything else you'd need to get through the website. The intro book is all we have so far, and that has enough to keep you going a long time.

The only reason I'm looking into getting more of their materials now is that...I'm so ambivalent about this...I've had to resort to using videos to keep him settled long enough for me to eat breakfast. He's so mobile now, and all he wants to do is walk, so he has very little patience for his exersaucer, and he needs someone to spot him anytime he's on the move. If I put on a baby sign language video, he'll sit happily in his little bebe pod chair for almost twenty minutes, which is long enough for me to eat something two-handedly and maybe fold a little laundry before he gets too restless. Anyhow, if I'm going to resort to a video, I'd rather it be baby sign language, which we both enjoy learning, than anything else.

Dave Barry says taking care of children is easy, as long as you never try to do anything else. That describes my experience so far.

[oaktavia.livejournal.com]

"taking care of children is easy, as long as you never try to do anything else."

ha ha ha ha ha okay, now you can understand the level of NUTS I was being primary care giver, running my own group, actively working toward my elevations with another group, and attending a third group because I had a student attending their circles & classes... and that wasn't including the cleaning biz, and the custom sewing & furniture making..!

I've been loving your posts on this!
especially the ASL stuff, since I used it with Taba since she was child - before they proved how beneficial it is.

[jaime-sama.livejournal.com]

People are so hard on parents who they think are using videos or TV as "babysitters" but I think it depends heavily on what you are showing the kids. I had a steady diet of Sesame Street as a kid and learned a lot from it. I don't think it rotted my brain or anything. Your twenty minutes of baby sign language video are not going to hurt Gareth. :)

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Well, I am glad you are more successful with the baby signing than we were. I tried it for a while but the only sign Andrew got was "modified" version of all done that involved any food on the tray ending up on the floor. After that I gave up. He seems to be talking just fine now though it took a bit longer. Maybe we will do better with the next kid. Or at least make new mistakes...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Your advice is the reason we've had so much luck with it. If you hadn't told us that, if we wanted to do baby sign, we'd need to read whatever book we were going to use before the birth, or we'd never get around to it, we would have figured we had plenty of time.

And Andrew does seem to have caught up just fine.