Saying much more than mama and dada

When my oldest daughter forgets to say please or is heading to the whiny I want, I rub my stomach with my stomach with my right hand and sometimes pull her back from the brink. "Can I please have…"

The please sign is a vestige of our teaching her a little sign language starting when she was about six months old. She is an incredibly verbal child. The problem now, if there is one, is to get her to stop talking long enough for my wife and me to have an actual conversation at the end of the day. But the real point is that before she could verbalize she was able to tell us some basic things like when she wanted "milk" and "more" to "eat" and when she was "all done."

Eventually our daughter learned more signs like please and thank you. And a wonderful daycare teacher expanded into all kinds of words, many of which remain etched in her sign vocabulary. So when our second daughter was about six months old my wife and I began the process all over again, aided this time by a proud and sign-savvy big sister.

At nine months or ten moths the baby started signing more and all done and milk, feats that I proudly proclaimed to all who were willing to listen. And the result of this is a story in Monday's paper on signing.

Little did I know as we embarked on this project with our oldest more than three years ago that we were part of a significant trend. Talking with several experts in language development and child development, however, revealed something that was clear to from the beginning – the process of teaching signs to our infants focused us on the kids in a wonderful way. Forget the signing, the bonding works for me.

Another thing I learned from Linda Acredolo, one of the leading researchers – and now entrepreneurs – in the baby sign language arena: signing can speed up potty training to the point where children as young as 10 months cad do it. Hopefully that means we can quickly say goodbye to diapers and that stinky pail. Even if we hit the 18-month average Acredolo has seen, it would be worth a mint.

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