Sign With Your Baby: How to Communicate With Infants Before They Can Speak

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Type: Book
Studio: Northlight Communications
This book teaches hearing parents how to use simple sign language gestures to communicate with their hearing infants before their infants can speak. Joseph Garcia uses anecdotes, practical guidelines and humor to explain the benefits and method for taking advantage of this unique form of early communication. He will help you recognize when your child is receptive to learning. He recommends which signs to teach first and shares ideas for games that can be fun and useful when introducing new signs. The book is also a useful reference with 145 clearly illustrated signs, enabling you to choose and teach the signs that will be most beneficial to you and your child. This book is also included in a separate "package" edition called the SIGN with your BABY Complete Learning Kit - which is comprised of the book, 60 minute training video and quick reference guide.

Good and short!
I chose to read this instead of Baby Signs because I figured as long as we're teaching Abby a second language, it might as well be an actual language (American Sign Language) that she can use later on in life too.

A major benefit of this book is that the text to read is less than 50 pages, and that's nothing to shake a stick at when you're a parent with little uninterrupted reading time. The rest of the book is a glossary of signs. However, I have decided to read Baby Signs after all, even though we still plan to use the signs from Dr. Garcia's book.

There are a couple reasons for my change of heart. I started reading Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love, which is by the same authors of Baby Signs. I really appreciated how the authors did a great job of backing up every major point with specific research studies. In Sign with Your Baby, the emphasis is more on anecdotes from parents and Dr. Garcia's own experience.

Because I was reading both books at the same time, I also found myself preferring the writing style of Baby Minds to Dr. Garcia's writing style. There's nothing wrong with it per se--I just thought the Baby Minds authors were a little more engaging and professional. (The book design might be playing into this impression too, as Sign with Your Baby doesn't exactly have a slick book design.)

But what really sealed the deal for me is that in his book, Dr. Garcia actually mentions and recommends Baby Signs. So that made me realize I didn't have to go with one or the other but that I could learn from both.

Simple to follow
I took four semesters of ASL in college (had forgotten most of it by the time I had my first child, unfortunately) and had learned that teaching sign language to your baby is an excellent tool for language development and reducing frustration caused through the inability to communicate. I loved how short and to the point this book was and found that the basic necessary information was included. My daughter picked up most signs very quickly at 9 months and I wished I had started teaching her sooner. There were a few signs missing from the glossary I would have liked to have seen, (juice, for example) but other than that I was very satisfied.

Joseph Garcia's Sign with your baby
Since my grandson and daughter used this kit 2 1/2 years ago I have seen some tremendous language skills build.
I now give this as my standard gift for a new baby.

A Good Introduction
This is a fairly good introduction to the world of baby sign language. If you want to know what the benefits are, what to start with and when to start this book is for you. However I would say that if you actually want to learn HOW to sign, the dvd version is much better.

Great Book
This book is great for teaching your child sign language. The beginning of the book goes through the benefits of teaching sign language to children before learning to talk, then takes you through how and when you should start. It was very informative on the subject. The end of the book goes through the different signs, showing the main signs like eat, bottle, drink, mommy, daddy, etc., but it also includes fun signs like rabbit, frog, and elephant. If you want to continue reading, I'll just list all of the signs included:

again
airplane
all gone
alligator
apple
baby
banana
bath
bear
beautiful
bed
bee
big
bird
book
bottle
boy
bread
brother
bull
burn
butter
butterfly
cake
car
cat
catch
change
clean
clouds
coat
cold
cookie
corn-on-the-cob
cow
cry
dance
delicious
dirty
dog
down
dream
drink
earache
eat
elephant
fall down
father
finished
fire
fish
flower
fly
friend
frog
get
girl
go
good
grandfather
grandmother
happy
head
headache
hear
hello
help
hide
home
horse
hot
house
hug
hurt
i love you
ice cream
in
insect
jump
ketchup
lion
little
meat
milk
mine
monkey
moon
more
mosquito
mother
mouse
no
orange
out
over
pain
pie
play
please
popcorn
potato
rabbit
rain
run
saxophone
scared
search
share
shoes
sick
sister
sit
sleep
snake
snow
socks
sore throat
sorry
spider
spoon
squirrel
stomach ache
stop
sun
telephone
tell
thank you
throw
thunder
tickle
tired
toilet
touch
turtle
under
up
wait
want
warm
water
where
work
worm
yes
you're welcome