My Life With Twins: Baby Sign Language
Using baby sign language with your twins is a great way to bond with your babies early on, and later, it is a great way to avoid temper tantrums and meltdowns with your pre-verbal child. Elizabeth and Emily are very food motivated, so their most used signs are “food”, “more”, “please” and “thank you”. I’m hoping to add more signs soon with them, as they are getting much better at mimicking me and adding motions to our songs and rhymes that we repeat through the day. There are many ways to get started with signing with your babies. It is never too early or too late to start signing. I started with the girls at about 3 months, however at 17 months they are only now just starting to consistently sign back to me. Other children sign earlier or later. Want to get started with signing? A great first step is a live class. Check with your local community ed program, public library or see if there is a Wee Hands program available near you. I knew some of our baby signs from when the boys were younger, so I picked up a lot of information from Baby Sign Language.com. This is a wonderful website, it is clearly laid out with printable flashcards, first signs to teach, videos, and lots of fun songs and signs. A favorite of ours is signing to Jack and Jill!I tried to get photos of the girls signing this morning. I even bribed them with fruit. However, Emily is a “fast signer”. She loves to make her signs lightning fast. Elizabeth pauses a bit more, but is less willing to sign. This is what I was able to get!
Elizabeth signs “thank you”
Emily shows “please”
Then they got back to what they really wanted to do!
Chime in! Have you signed with your babies? What was your favorite sign? You know I’d love to hear from you!
Do you have twins, are expecting twins or know someone who is? Make sure you click on over to my “Got Twins?” page and learn more about the wonders of twindom! Lots of advice and experience from pregnancy, breast feeding and beyond!
We taught my oldest a little sign language. He did not talk until he was 3-he knew enough sign language to get what he wanted with no motivation to talk. We decided to not teach sign language to our next children for this reason. I missed the cute baby signs with the next two boys. Glad signing is going well for the girls!
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My grandson signs at 18 months and it is sooooo helpful! I love the sign for “car” and he made up one for outside….patting his head. We think it has something to do with hats. He does all the usual ones…more, please, eat, drink, bath, book….they are so useful and entertaining…and it is nice having him actually communicating with us!
The photos of Elizabeth and Emily saying please and thank you are the cutest!