Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers: A Parent's Strategy and Activity Guide

by Michelle Anthony, Reyna Lindert

A Fun, Easy Way to Talk with Your Baby

Babies can communicate with their hands long before they can speak. Using American Sign Language (ASL), Dr. Michelle Anthony and Dr. Reyna Lindert have created the simple and successful Signing Smart system to teach parents how to integrate signing into everyday life with their hearing children. Through the more than seventy activities presented in this book, parents will learn the tools and strategies they need to understand how to introduce signing and build their child's sign and word vocabulary.

Using ASL signs and Signing Smart with hearing infants and toddlers has many benefits, including:

-reducing frustration and tantrums
-allowing children to express what they need or want
-facilitating speaking
-fostering communication and promoting learning

By using these practical, easy-to-learn methods, parents and babies-from as young as five months old to preschool age-can "converse" through signs at mealtime, bath time, playtime, or anytime.

Featuring the Signing Smart Illustrated Dictionary, with 130 signs.

Genres: Parenting

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Michelle Anthony, M.A., Ph.D. is a child development researcher and educator. She is a co-founder of Wide-Eyed Learning, LLC, which teaches parents and educators the Signing Smart approach to using ASL signs with hearing babies and toddlers. She lives with her husband and signing children in Centennial, Colorado.

Reviews

[JennyFur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derek and I have been doing some research on signing with babies. I checked out a book from the library, Signing Smart with Babies and Toddlers, and am feeling pretty excited about it. A lot of people hesitate to sign with their babies because they don’t see the need when they can provide a rich spoken language experience. In other words, why should I sign with my child when I can speak to him? But according to these authors, signing is an excellent supplement to verbal communication. Babies are able to communicate via signs at a much earlier age than they can use spoken words. With early exposure a few babies use their first signs by 4-5 months and many by 6-7 months. Research has also shown that babies who sign also speak earlier and have markedly larger vocabularies. I’m going off the research published in one book but Derek has done some browsing through Baby Signing for Dummies and the findings seem to coincide.

They say that by beginning exposure to signing at Trevor’s age, we can expect him to use his first sign in two to four weeks. It’s been about one week and we’re still waiting. I’m wondering if he’ll take longer because I don’t know how consistent we’ve been. We use our starter signs numerous times throughout the day but so many times, once the moment has passed, I recognize the missed opportunity.

Starter signs, you ask? As recommended, we’re starting with four parent-focused signs (those rooted in needs) and four child-focused signs (those based on things of interest). Once T-Rex begins to use even one sign with meaning we can add more signs. Once the ball is rolling, the only rule is to stay ahead of him. It will take some work on our part as well, but Derek and I are looking forward to learning American Sign Language.

Our parent-focused signs:
food/eat
milk
more
bed

Our child-focused signs:
ball
drive/car
music
light

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down my favorite baby signing book. The first chapter is an invaluable resource in making baby signing tangible, realistic, fun, and spelled-out! I love that the book is not just anecdotal like so many parenting books, but it actually has science and research backing its language development theories and methods. I also like its realistic approach and fun suggestions for games and routines to help make signing and life with a baby/toddler fun! My favorite theory in the book is the importance of keeping a balance of child-motivated signs and parent-motivated signs as you introduce more and more to the baby. This is crucial, and helps gets babies signing sooner because they rather sign "ball" then "milk"...they already know how to cry when they're hungry, but they don't have a way to communicate "ball" or "light" or something that makes them excited. While this is a great book, please note the dictionary in the back is not inclusive. It was sufficent for my needs for bridging the communication gap, but definitely not a complete ASL dictionary (nor does it claim to be).

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!! A great guide to parents who want to introduce sign language to their children, whether the parent already knows sign or not. I do, and still wanted a strategy guide, and this is it! it gives you great tips on what to introduce when and why, how many signs to introduce at a time, and what you can reasonably expect from your child. The best part is that it encourages you to use actual ASL signs instead of making stuff up, so that your baby can communicate with other signing babies- which there are more and more of all the time. At the back is a fantastic signing dictionary, so that you have a solid base of signs to start with. Every parent who is interested in teaching their kid sign language in any form needs to read this book, no matter how old your child is now.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm convinced that this is the best book available for learning to communicate with your baby. My daughter is a very social baby, but I was signing to her and not really getting anything back. I skimmed this book for pointers, and came out feeling so much better and more educated about the whole process. I don't think I'll ever read the whole book; like a lot of parent-oriented nonfiction, it's got a lot of repetition, unnecessary explanation, and self-promotional fluff, but with that said, I fully endorse the method. Within days of reworking my strategies, my baby was signing back. In addition, we've learned to communicate better in other ways, and we have more fun in our daily interactions. Five stars because this book improved my quality of life :)

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

The annoying part of this book is how they make signing with your baby sound like it's their idea. Their techniques are great, but pretty universal. But it was nice to read the tips that they mentioned, especially the "this is happening, what should I do?" questions from parents. Also, the interesting part of this book is that it has an idea section--how to incorporate signing into bath time, etc.

[Chase · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book at a Signing Smart Workshop I attended in the Spring. I like the way the book is set up - first it gives the theory, then the research and finally the application. I especially appreciate the picture dictionary for the signs since I am a visual learner. We've now started this signing process with Finn....so my real opinion of the book...will have to get back to you on that.

[Alissa Faust · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the facts that this book gave to why signing with your kids is a good idea. It also gave a step by step approach of when you should see your child start to sign back. I read it before Ava was born, so it really convinced me that this is what I wanted to do, and it has been great!

[Lacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh...not my favorite! It's better if books SHOW what they are talking about not just throw up a bunch of words, especially when it comes to teaching American Sign Language or in the case Baby Sign Language. So yea not my favorite.

[Emalia Tillotson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great if you can actually apply yourself enough to memorize the signs yourself and then actually use them in everyday life. I found it challenging and didn't really get into it.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I read this when I got it 6 months ago, maybe Hannah would be signing by now. But you can't do everything.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invaluable, my 10 year old was a baby when we were involved in this book. She grew to use sign to communicate with Michelle's help.