Baby Sign Language: Ultimate Short and Amazing Stories

Our instructors take a lot of pride in what they do, and love hearing updates and feedback from past students! Here are some Baby Sign Language Success Stories.

I adopted our daughter from China and she was 12 months, 2 weeks old when we brought her home. I started signing to her immediately. All the typical signs. Milk, mumma, dadda, girl, boy, food, good, bad, etc. One night, when she was about 15 months old, after rocking her to sleep, I gently put her in her crib. Of course she woke up and started crying.

She stood with her arms up wanting me to pick her up. I said, “no honey, it’s bed time. You have to go to sleep.” Signing “bed/sleep”. She signed, as she was sobbing, “good” and “girl”. (I get teary every time I tell this story.) She was letting me know that she thought I was making her lie down because I thought she wasn’t a good girl. (Either that, or she was a master manipulator at a very early age!) That was it! I picked her up and cuddled her until she fell asleep again and I’ve been wrapped around her beautiful little finger ever since. – Dawna

Me and my daughter Holly took your level 1 class back in Nov/Dec, so thought I’d give you an update. Her first sign was around 8 months and now she’s 11.5 months. We are keeping up with signing pretty good, and in the
last week, Holly seems to have really caught on. She is signing all done, milk, more, dad (although this sign is closer to her ear than forehead, she’s definitely using it to talk about her dad!), dog (which is funny because we don’t have a dog), bird (backwards…so cute!), grapes, and I love you!

The last one is obviously my favorite. She does what you said Bronwyn does – sticks out her open hand to sign “I love you”, but it melts my heart every time. Thanks again for the awesome Baby Sign Language lessons!

It is hard to believe but Jack is almost 16 months now! He is saying quite a few words, but we still use our sign language on a regular basis. He uses ‘Please’ a lot (although we often have to prompt him) but I find it helps keep the whining to a minimum as I always say to him “How do you ask nicely?” and he’ll use the sign for ‘please’. He also uses the sign for ‘eat’, ‘water’, ‘thank you’, ‘help’ and ‘all done’. And, to this day, as soon as he hears the opening to “Hello Friends”, he gets a huge grin on his face.

I also wanted to mention that he has a large vocabulary and says over 15 words which I think proves that sign language has in no way slowed his speech development.
Thanks again for a wonderful class – we really enjoyed it and I will definitely be recommending it to all of my new Mom friends!

My name is Karen, and I’ve been working with My Smart Hands for 5 years now, and loved every second of it! I signed a lot with both of my boys and it helped us tremendously. My youngest, Q, took a little longer to really grasp signing than his super signer older brother, but the signs he really clung to were his bedtime signs.

I co-slept with Q, which was a lot different than my strict routine with his older brother. One thing that I had found difficult as he got older was putting him to bed without me. We started working on his bedtime signs around a year old, and one night (after weeks of struggling bedtime on his own), he turned to me and signed ‘SLEEP’. I took him upstairs, tucked him into his side of my bed, said goodnight, and that was it! He was asleep!

After that, even nights he wouldn’t sign it first, when I would it made going to bed much easier. I have SO many great signing stories with my boys, but this one, and this video is one of my favourites! – Karen Hewko

These are amazing Baby Sign Language Success stories! Click here for some more of these heartwarming stories. If you have a signing story to share, send it to us at rcdirector(@)mysmarthands.com. You could be featured!