Oh The Irony

A mere 2 days after posting the Baby Sign Language entry, a huge changed happened in Kiernan. On the 7th he went to daycare, and that night I swear we did not bring home the same little boy. Suddenly, and without warning he went from saying a handful of words to trying to say almost anything we coached him on. I spent the entire weekend combing his "My First Word" books and getting him to try to say various things when the pictures were shown. It was so awesome!

If I thought it was like flipping a switch watching kids go from immobile to crawling and/or walking, it is absolutely nothing compared to when they gain the desire and capability to speak. He was (and still is) a virtual sponge. It is almost a struggle to satisfy his remarkable desire to learn new words.

At the same time it is the most amusing thing to listen to him try to pronounce some words. I never tire of hearing him attempt though. "Elalel" (elephant) etc. are quite the hoot! It seems as though a number of words he says backwards - sun is "nus" for instance and ant is "nat".

There are other words that are accompanied by various gestures. For instance with the word top he does this little song and dance. I have yet to discover where he picked that up from. Then there is the ever amusing "AIRPLANE!" with the arms thrown up into the air each time he says it. He came up with that all on his own too. I guess he just really loves airplanes. By far the cutest though, has to be wolf. In our kitchen is a picture of a wolf given to us one Christmas by a college friend. Since the time Kiernan was very little we would point at the picture and tell him the sound the wolf made. He would do his best to mimic the howl as he threw his head back. Today, anytime he sees a picture of a wolf (any picture, not just that one) he refuses to even attempt to say the word but instead throws his head back and issues a little howl. Very cute.

So back to my point, I was correct in my last post. I would have to say his vocabulary has dramatically expanded over the last two weeks and he is now starting to make attempts to talk in short sentences. I must say I am dying to know if the other boys who are baby sign language die-hards are talking as much yet. It will be very interesting to find out, very interesting indeed.

Baby Sign Language

A number of parents seem to like to teach their kids baby sign language, including some I am friends with. They brag endlessly about how many signs their kid knows and may as well be paid for advertising various companies that promote baby sign language. I've grown tired of it. I've done my research and decided against teaching it, so obviously I disagree with that approach.

Any search about this subject on the internet reveals that kids who learn sign language tend to be delayed in learning to speak. Sure, before kids are able to grasp complete control of the ability to move their tongue in various ways to make sounds it makes sense to teach them this skill. Although really, by the time they are able to make signs without issue, they are also old enough to start speaking. Yet, why learn to speak if you can "talk" with your hands? I wouldn't be so set against it if it was ASL (American Sign Language) which is universally understood, but no, there are special signs that are used instead.

Am I missing something here? What is the benefit over learning to talk? Maybe there is a really good reason to do this, but I'm sure not seeing it. My kid will be speaking in sentences and paragraphs long before our friend's kids are able to say 50 words. This leads me to my next theory.

Everyone talks about the terrible twos and more and more parents are now talking about how three is worse than two. I often wonder though, is part of the reason we are hearing more about how terrible the age of three is related to the delay in speech from teaching children sign language? Being a first time parent of a child who is not yet even 2, I can only speculate, but here is my theory.

A large part of the reason that children of 2 (or 3) are hard to manage is because they are unable to express their desires to us. They are still mastering their language skills and learning their boundaries and the expectations we have of them.

My theory is that by teaching our kids to speak instead of this so-called sign language the effects of the "terrible twos" (or threes) will be reduced. Their language skills will be mastered sooner if they have less to learn about how to express themselves. I also believe that many of the "terrible two" issues arise from the fact that parents decide to have multiple children and usually within 2-3 years of each other. This steals the focus of the parent away from the older child and in order to gain more attention they act out and push the boundaries.

I'm no specialist in this area, but common sense tells me this. I anxiously await for Kiernan to hit this magical age and see if we have the issues that I hear about so often. Maybe I could apply for a government grant to study this and poll people about whether their child was worse at age two or age three, if they taught this child baby sign language, and if they had a second child about that same time. Then I could publish the results that "terrible twos" (or threes) really exist. LOL!