When people talk about communication with infants and toddlers, most ask “is your baby talking yet?” I was even asked this when my son was 3 months old. I mean at that point, I could say yes…  for things like a grunt, squeal, giggle, scream, and eventually babble sounds. But that doesn’t really count as talking. Does “talking” have to be the official milestone of communication? I would argue no. Instead, I would say something like – how is your child communicating with you?

Infants communicate from the moment they are delivered. A cry is a form of communication, so is lip smacking, rooting, snuggling, and finger grasping. Obviously, it is your job as a parent to figure out what these non-verbal signs actually mean. You get a polar plunge from the first moment your child arrives in figuring out what they are communicating. Talk about a learning curve. I remember saying “just tell me what you need!” to my infant son when I couldn’t figure out what he needed. I’m sure others have felt the same. I love this line from Jerry McGuire – “Help Me, Help You!” (it’s not “show me the money” although that is another great line). Help me, help you… little baby! Just give me something to go on here!

I had to figure out all his non-verbal cues such as watching his eyes, his hands and fingers, and his body language. An example of this is when my son began eating solid foods – he would point to the refrigerator and start whining when he was hungry. He knew where his food came from, he knew that he needed it, and he communicated without using words. Can you think of a moment when your child did the same thing?

Kids communicate in really subtle ways. My husband and I learned about and embraced infant and toddler sign language pretty early on. As you know, infants and toddlers can understand more than they can articulate. Sign language was a potential tool for us to incorporate into our parenting style and also gave our son a tool to use for communication. I am so glad we tried this out because it gave us an insane number of opportunities to verbally and physically communicate with our son.

We started sign language with play, reading, and mealtimes. A tip we got from our lactation consultant was to incorporate signs into play and reading time before mealtimes. She said that this introduces the concept without overriding kids’ natural hunger and fullness cues such as signing for “more” when they are already done eating. I got this really great book, Baby Sign Language Made Easy by Lane Rebelo which has 101 signs to use for your baby. I didn’t do 101 signs. Nope, just the ones that I thought I would use and that I would actually remember how to sign correctly. The main signs we did with our son were: More, Milk, Water, Eat, All Done, Drink, Book, Ball, Dog, Cat, Diaper, Hat, Shoes, What, Where, and Help. As I write this list and look back at my journal, I have no idea why we didn’t sign for Mom and Dad… wellppp you can’t bat a thousand every time!

Actually doing sign language as a part of our routine tasks was challenging. I would just talk to him and then remember I was supposed to sign to him and talk together. That was really hard to do when preparing food, carrying him around, doing laundry, getting him dressed, and all the other things parents do. I mean, I should remember to do milk, water, eat, more, and all done during the 6 meals per day for my son right? It took some time and practice on my part to learn when to sign, to verbally say the word with the sign, and make sure my son could actually see me doing it. I had the tiniest window into the experience of someone who relies solely on sign language and lip reading, which gave me a newfound appreciation for my functioning voice and ears.

As my son has grown, he now combines sign language with verbal words and makes little sentences with them. I am laughing because we intentionally taught him certain signs for communicating and he has even created some of his own that we had to figure out. Our communication isn’t exactly phenomenal but it is pretty good and I think this has saved us a lot of frustration. Jason can actually communicate in multiple ways what he needs or wants and we can actually figure it out. I think all of you have either been able to decipher the baby jibberish or you become completely confused by it.

Here is an example of Jason’s baby jibberish:

Jason: “veee vah veee vah” with arms flailing back and forth

Mom: “do you want to vacuum?”

Jason: “yeahhhh!”

 Here is another one:

Jason: signing for bowl and saying “beee che che”

Mom: “Big pieces of cheese in a bowl?”

Jason: “Yeah mom, booowllll beee che che”

Infants and toddlers are amazingly scrappy and communicate in their baby jibberish ways. We, as parents, can save ourselves a lot of headaches by investing in communication tools with our kids too. Like I said before, I’m so glad we used baby sign language. “Help me, help you…” no truer words were spoken. Check out my next blog, posting on April 21st on verbal speech development.