Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Baby Signs: How to Talk with Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk
The bestselling parenting guide featured on "Oprah" and "Dateline" is revised and updated with new signsFor every parent or caregiver who has struggled unsuccessfully to decode baby grunts and grabs, resulting in tearful frustration for both adult and child, there is "Baby Signs. "Based on 20 years of research, this one-of-a-kind classic shows you how to encourage your bab...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
June 24th 2002
by McGraw-Hill Companies
(first published 1996)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
648)
Everyone with a child should read this book before hopping on the baby sign wagon. This is the original book by the professors who "discovered" baby sign with their children. I like how it points out that baby sign is not about teaching a second language or continuing it for the rest of their lives. It's about relieving the frustration of a baby able to understand but unable to communicate back because their vocal muscle control isn't good enough. It's about building relationships so a child can...more
I asked for this book years ago, back when my first child was a baby, because I wanted to try Baby Sign Language. The book was helpful in that it gave me some basics to work with, and my daughter was able to tell me, beginning at about nine months, when she wanted "more" or was "hungry" or wanted "milk." (I wish I had been more persistent in teaching more signs. I started a bit early and the lack of pay-off perhaps discouraged me, as this book warned it might. I'd suggest not starting until 9 or...more
May 20, 2010
Shirari Industries
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
future parents, people who care about children, pediatricians, psychologists, linguists
Shelves:
kids-and-families
This book is awesome. It's full of clear instructions and useful diagrams and photos showing how to use symbolic gestures to communicate with your baby before your baby can use spoken language. This speeds spoken language acquisition, increases bonding between parent and child, builds self-esteem and self-confidence, and helps prevent a lot of frustration and stress.
It's not a very vegan-friendly book, but the authors appear to be sensitive to other issues and they encourage families to make up...more
It's not a very vegan-friendly book, but the authors appear to be sensitive to other issues and they encourage families to make up...more
Interesting to learn about what babies want to talk about.: Not just what they want to eat or whether their diaper is dirty, but also the things that they see in the world around them. It's also useful to teach babies about safety signs and ways to describe when they are sick, when something is too hot to touch, etc. One thing is that the book totally didn't mention was teaching politeness, etc. I think that baby sign language could also be a valuable way to teach children about please and thank...more
Originally I was really annoyed with the trend of teaching babies sign language. Like parents need another thing to feel inadequate about. But for whatever reason I picked up this book at my public library, and learned about what started this craze. Originally teaching babies sign language was not about giving parents another way to compete with their gifted tots, but a tool to help parents understand the needs of their very young children who hadn't mastered spoken language yet. Basically, the...more
We got this book when our daughter was 7 months. She started signing by 8 months ! It was so neat to be able to communicate ideas like "more" "sleep" "sad" "again" and even later, "more milk" "More Juice" (she would sign MORE but say JU) and eventually, at 11 months to 1 yr, bigger concepts like "light" -in fact one day she kept signing "light" and I thought she was just fascinated with them, and then looked up and realized she was trying to tell me that one of the light bulbs in our 5-bulb dini...more
I didn't actually read every page of this book. Perhaps I am impatient but I wanted to jump forward to see diagrams of the signs I would like to use with my child, signs for things that he might want, i.e more, drink, toilet, toy, etc. I wasn't as interested in the stories of children using signs. Nevertheless I believe it was this book that popularized the idea of using signs for children who aren't yet able to speak and for that I commend it. I also found it interesting to realize that we use...more
I liked the ideal behind this book, but it is not a very practical book for baby sign language. It encourages the use of made up signs and really pushes signing up for the "Baby Signs" programs, rather than being an all-in-one way to learn.
A better option would be one of the books or videos that teaches actual ASL sign language, or simply using a free ASL dictionary online and teaching your baby basic signs as they learn about new things. I loved the "Baby Signing Time" videos, but they are expe...more
A better option would be one of the books or videos that teaches actual ASL sign language, or simply using a free ASL dictionary online and teaching your baby basic signs as they learn about new things. I loved the "Baby Signing Time" videos, but they are expe...more
This book provides a more robust introduction to baby sign language than a book I previously reviewed on this topic, Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants before They Can Speak.[return][return]I especially appreciated the easy-to-digest "Ten Steps to Success" in this book:[return][return] 1. Start with just a few signs[return][return] 2. Always use the baby sign and word together[return][return] 3. Repeat the sign and word several times[return][return] 4. Point to the object when...more
There is not a description for how horrible i thought this book was! I thought about buying from the library so that no one else would borrow it.
The authors of this book encourage parents to just make up any old thing as a sign, as long as you and your baby can understand each other. It describes the author's own homesigns, and they even include a dictionary in the back of the very limited signs they've made up... admittedly a few are actual ASL or signed english signs.
This is a bad thing becaus...more
The authors of this book encourage parents to just make up any old thing as a sign, as long as you and your baby can understand each other. It describes the author's own homesigns, and they even include a dictionary in the back of the very limited signs they've made up... admittedly a few are actual ASL or signed english signs.
This is a bad thing becaus...more
When I was given this book as a gift, all I could think of was that gorilla years ago that learned sign language. Unsettling association for some reason. But! I was surprised to find out how not "out there" this book is. Much less hard core or opinionated than I expected, and probably very helpful to any conscientious parent or day care/nursery teacher trying to relate to a child's awareness of their world. Like many parenting books, though, this would make a much better pamphlet than book. Redu...more
This idea intrigued me because I loved how it allowed us to communicate (aside from basic gestures and body language) with our baby before she could talk. So, I read this book to learn how to do it.
Rachel (our first child) learned over 70 signs and I believe they helped her learn to talk faster because she loved to communicate with us. She is 2 years old now and speaks in complete sentences. Her signing started to fizzle out around 18 months because by that time she could pretty much say all...more
Rachel (our first child) learned over 70 signs and I believe they helped her learn to talk faster because she loved to communicate with us. She is 2 years old now and speaks in complete sentences. Her signing started to fizzle out around 18 months because by that time she could pretty much say all...more
I like the idea of giving a baby a means of communication as a bridge between his ability to grasp concepts and his ability to use spoken words. This book explained the idea well (I must have read a newer edition than some other reviewers because many of their complaints were addressed clearly in my reading). I'll try to remember to update my review in six months or so once I've had a chance to try it for myself.
Extremely straightforward and full of plain common sense. And yet, I really needed to read this. I'm finding recently that validation means an awful lot to me. It's one thing to know something, whether through intuition or a reputable source, but to hear it again and again is really comforting. This book makes Baby Signing a reality for any family. I can't wait for Mer's first sign!
I really like the concept and am interested in trying it. However, I feel like they could have condensed this into a much shorter book. At least it is a quick read. If you already read their Baby Minds book, you probably don't need to read this one too (the chapter about signs in Baby Minds is sufficient to get you started). However, if you aren't convinced or if you need ideas for signs then you might find this helpful.
If you've already decided you want to use baby signs, this book is not the book for you. Mostly this is advertising for their program, trying to convince you to do it. It doesn't really teach you how to do it. If you want to use baby signs, get an ASL dictionary or make up your own easy signs!
Loved the concept of signing to your baby, and I loved the signs at the back of the book. but all in all I think you would be better off just skipping the whole book and looking at the diagrams of different signs! There is nothing really worth reading in the book, and the pictures seem to make the book seem outdated! Not a book I would buy!
HUH! My kid is 1 and can now point out and get us to turn on the ceiling fan, the lightswitch, fish, flowers, toothbrushes, dogs, and express her enthusiasm for FOOOOOOOOOD. Really entertaining to watch her communicate with us. Oh, and she can say "ball".
This book is ok, I didn't actually read every page of this book. I found the idea of baby signs could be explained in 20 pages or so, but the book is much longer. I just read the first pages and the end of the book, and I think I got the idea.
I love the idea of baby signs and am already sold on the idea. 90% of this book was just trying to sell the reader on the how cool baby signs are. I just wanted to know how to do it. The last 20 pages or so had pictures and examples, which was good, but it would have been lots better if that was the majority of the book.
view 1 comment
The guts of this book is really the last 20 pages or so of the "signing dictionary" and the rest is the author trying to convince parents of the benefits of signing with your baby. So I probably wouldn't invest the $$ to buy this book, just check it out from the library and photocopy the back section. Also I coupled this book with watching a couple of signing videos which I think is helpful.
As an addendum to this review, I recently found out (from a friend who teaches deaf ed) that many of the s...more
As an addendum to this review, I recently found out (from a friend who teaches deaf ed) that many of the s...more
This book just really didn't seem to have a large number of signs that I would have thought to be basic/first signs for an infant. I much preferred Baby Signing for Dummies and Baby Signing 1 2 3.
Awesome to think you can communicate with your baby. We did this with our kids and it made life a lot easier because we could figure out what they wanted much more easily.
I ended up skimming this book because I've already read a bunch of signing books from the library. I've had this a long time so I wanted to read it finally. I've found that for this subject, videos are best.
May 09, 2008
Amy
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
mamas and dadas
Recommended to Amy by:
book seller lady
my god. you can see that my life right now revolves around that little guy. anywho...good read, to the point, doesn't over do it, simple, great pictures, easy to read, not an overwhelming in depth analysis of signs, just the right amount of the whats and whys and hows. i (illegally) made photocopies of the pictures to hang around the house for the older kids to look at and get involved in. cyrus can already sign "more" and "eat" both food related of course...that little chunky monkey. the only t...more
The authors in this book encourage parents to work with their children and make up their own signs. This might be an effective approach for some families, but it wasn't for us. For one, I could never remember the signs we made up. Having set ASL signs helped give me a reference to remind me what I was teaching my daughter so I could be consistent. Also, my daughter has signing cousins and it was important to me that she learn actual ASL signs so she could communicate with them (in baby talk, of...more
A great tool helping your baby communicate before the words come to them. You only need to pick out a few specific ones that fit your needs.
This was great! We didn't use it as much as we could have, but I remember using some signs with the kids that REALLY helped!
Signing with our baby has made a huge difference in our quality of life as new parents. She can communicate so much with us it's just astounding. These women are the authors of our favorite signing board books as well, and their approach is positive and no-nonsense. Highly recommended for parents wanting to communicate with their little kids as early as possible.
I enjoyed this book. Gave me an idea of the basics, when to start, with what signs and how to go about it. Did not finish, but will probably take it out from library again when it's time to give it a try.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
