Baby Sign with my 2 sons

Hanz's Note : Shared about this great discovery formerly in our old blog beginning year 2009 when we started Baby Signing routine late 2008.

We wave our hands when we are leaving and saying goodbye. We raise one finger to our lips indicating the needs to be silence. We nod for 'Yes' and shake our head for 'No'. Simple gesture for universal meaning. Signing brings people closer despite language differences. For hearing-challenged & speak-challenged, signing would be one of the way for them to communicate. But, how about communicating with baby? Baby for sure cannot talk.

Learning to talk is a complicated business. Based on research and findings, average human being can pronounce first true word is at 12 months old or 1 year old. So how do we go about before reaching that age especially it is only word and on building up sentences mostly can be done at 19 months!

This is where signing get into the picture!

What I'm about to do is sharing on my recent discovery and our current daily routine to our baby and to our preschool-aged son as well.



Signing is not a new thing for me. I know by heart on how to sign the alphabets, indeed from letter 'A' to 'Z'. I can't recall how I learned it, but I suspected it must be from many books I read in my childhood. It did'nt occured to me either that I would take signing seriously in my later years though I always feels fascinated when observing 'unique' people signing to communicate.

I keep on buying educationcal vcds for my sons and two of the vcds I bought previously featured signing. In Preschool Power 6, there is one segment showing how to sign while singing the old favourite children song, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star".

I'm yet to memorize all the movement as I tend to mix it up. A fun way to sing the song and some activity to do with your child.

Blue's Clues is my favourite and so to our elder son. Hope our lil baby would like the cuddly Blue & funny Steve & Joe too.



This one featured all about signing. Very, very entertaining. We love it. Hanafi is doing his level best to sign following the Blue's Clues.

I think I came across the Baby Sign programme by Babyloft & Miabambina but it's the subscribed mailing by Fabulousmom that triggered the heart to have a look. One sunny Saturday afternoon, I went the Intro Talk at Fabulosmom being conducted by Baby Signs Malaysia Director, Ms Jamie Solomon. Brief yet informative.

Once I'm home, discussed it with hubby and he's as his usual being supportive for whatever venture I'm onto, motivate me more to sign up for the course. After surfed their website, I told myself, OK! Let's fill up this form and submit. Within days of several emails exchanged with Jamie, I'm off to the Parent Workshop.

Having attended the Parent Workshop at the BSC HQ itself by one of their instructor, Natasha, I get so excited and eager to start it right away ! This is what I obtained by attending that.


It's been like almost four months now we've been signing and guess what? The first sign my baby responded, really responded not just understanding was a sign for 'Milk!'. He opened-closed his palm for few seconds exactly like what I always showed it to him. Plus the usual adorable panting meaning he needs the cuddling session of breastfeeding. How exhilarating we were then. I referred our breastfeed session as 'Nenen' & I think so other most Malays even Chinese are referring the same. He did that first sign when he was 7months plus. And, he continue doing that for a month then drop-out. He is 9months now, so far no new sign. Nope. We will not rush him as we believe every baby has his own pace.

On top of that hubby & me having fun signing with our elder son too and he is getting good at it. We encouraged him to sign to his little brother too. Who knows perhaps they can bond better by signing and might create new sign specifically for only them can understand it? Talking about brotherhood, huh? Hope their mother won't be left out from that. Ha! Ha!

Oh! Before I forget, there's another thing I want to add. I've chatted about 'Attachment Parenting' some time ago and one of the tools in that approach is 'Belief in the language of your baby's cry'. See? Isn't that is referring to Baby Sign? You can peeped back on my previous chatting here. That's a plus point for you to consider joining me in this journey if you are just like me adopting the Attachment Parenting in your parenting style.