Teaching hand signals to babies is a bridge to early language development and emotional bonding.
Imagine your child is crying. They want something. But they can’t communicate what they want. “Well DUH! Babies can’t talk.” But if you teach your child how to use hand signals, you can avoid getting frustrated and learn exactly what your baby wants. I have seen babies as young as 9 months old learn hand signal. As a Montessori certified teacher, I encourage caregivers and parents to teach hand signals as early as possible, especially if your child is non-verbal.
In this blog, I’ll share the 10 hand signals that you can introduce to your baby so they don’t have to always cry for what they want or need.
My child started using this sign when he was about 10 months old. To introduce it, every time you’re giving your child milk, start showing the sign, while saying the word.
I would say this word about 10 times in one sitting to let it sink in to my child. For instance, I might say something like, “Here’s your MILK. Mmmm, MILK. You like MILK. I like MILK. You’re drinking MILK. Yummy MILK. What’s inside your bottle? MILK’s inside your bottle.”
This might sound ridiculous, but repetition is how children learn.
This, is something children will learn quickly, especially when they’ve developed favourite foods. To introduce this, give them a small piece of something they like, like a snack. Then when they seem to want more, show them the sign and only give them more once they’ve shown the sign, or you can do hand-over-hand for the word more if they aren’t able to do so themselves yet.
So, let’s say your child is struggling with something. For instance, climbing up a chair, and they start crying. Instead of helping them right away. Look at them in the eyes, and while using the hand signal, say something like, “It looks like you need HELP to get on the chair.
Just say, HELP and I can HELP you get on the chair. Can you say, HELP?” Then once they’ve signed it, you can reinforce it by saying something like, “HELP! You said HELP!”
This is probably something my child will easily request 50 times a day! He’ll use this to ask for us to open the doors, cabinets, cookie jars, eye glass case, the fridge, and so much more! So, just a warning, once you’ve taught your child how to sign this, you’ll be seeing a lot of THIS (gesture open sign) throughout your days.
I love this hand signal. This is super useful for when your child wants to look at something that they don’t have access to. For instance, something my son loves to do is look at things inside the fridge. So, what he’ll do is he’ll sign ‘open’ then ‘see’, then point to the fridge.
This one is helpful for when your child just wants a snack or is getting hungry. To introduce it, you can use the sign while they are already eating, or if they are pointing to something they want to eat.
This is a sign your child will most likely use when they’re finished eating or finished using the toilet. So, once they’re showing signs of being all finished with something, you can say something like, “It looks like you’re all done!”
So, the sign language for ‘have’ is this (gesture sign). But, what I’ve done is I would associate the words ‘may I have that’ with the sign. This is because when my son becomes more verbal, I’d like him to say those specific words when asking for items.
This is something I’ve recently taught to my son to use when someone’s given him something, or helped him with something. So, for instance when someone’s given him something, I’ll tell him to say thank you.
This sign has probably got to be my favourite, probably just because of how my son does it. The way we’ve taught it to him isn’t the tradition ASL gesture for no, which is this (‘no’ hand signal). This is because he’s unable to imitate these movements yet, so we’ve had to adjust based on his development. That’s why, when he says ‘no thank you’ it would look like this. We’ve been teaching him that it’s okay to say no when he’s feeling uncomfortable with someone, or something. For instance, in our home, we’ll actually ask him if we can kiss him, or hug him and he’ll either let us, or he’ll walk away. So, when he does allow us to show affection towards him, if he feels like we’re kissing him too much or hugging him too much, he’ll actually use this sign, cueing us to stop.
He’ll also use this when people are offering to give him food he doesn’t want, or if others are asking to carry him and he doesn’t want to be carried by them.
Thanks for reading! Stay FRESH!
