Before my son was born I had planned to study all the baby signs so that I could teach him to communicate with us very early and hopefully also improve his memory and education levels. However, life seemed to just happen once he was born, and I never sat down to learn. A friend of mine had given us some great flash cards and I can honestly say I looked at them a few times and tried to learn them. I ended up doing all this when my son was only about 3 months old though, and he hardly knew that he was even moving his muscles, let alone able to control them.
He had been given a few Baby Einstein DVDs and other educational videos as well at a very young age and I thought I'd try them out when he was an infant. I found out right away that he had a huge fascination with with the TV screen, even at his very young age. I also fell in love with the Baby Einstein DVDs and quickly had them all downloaded. He never has liked all of them but Baby's First Signs surely was one that he enjoyed. I thought it would be my ticket for him learning the signs as well. Somewhere on the sidelines in my brain I knew that unless I was going to be teaching him this stuff with first handed interactions that he wasn't going to learn them. And I was right, at 1 year (typically said three months into the time period that baby's are able to sign) he still didn't know any signs.
At 16 months I bought a great book call The Everything Toddler Activities book. It gave me the simple idea to teach my son to raise his arms high when I ask him "How big are you?" That is a baby sign, and that is right about when I realized how easy it would be to teach him simple signs, how cute it was to see him do it, and how fun it was for him. Of course his older age probably had a lot to do with it.
Tonight he amazed me. Sitting on our couch this evening and watching Ni Hao Kai Lan right before his bedtime he shocked me with his amazing little sponge brain. At this point (Him being 17 months old) he responds to "How big are you?" Waves bye and hi often, flips his hands over when he is "all done", and points to his nose and ears.
A little back story in this very long blog just to get you to where you need to be to appreciate this... a month or two ago we bought a hat/mask set from IKEA. A great little green dragon set for kids to play make believe with. My son loves it and Daddy ended up teaching him that Dinosaurs say, "Rawr", which he will say on command. When we say what does dinosaur say? He growls and points to his mask.
So back to the couch and Kai Lan...
The episode was about the dragon festival and they were racing some boats across a lake. He smiles and laughs all throughout the show and at the end a real dragon comes out. That's when he turns to me and growls, the same dragon way he does when we ask him what dinosaur says. It was brilliant, and maybe that's just his mother talking, but the way it all went down was so beautiful and inspired me to re-try the whole sign thing.
I tested him following that to see what he can absorb at this point. I showed him the sign for milk and he took it right away, then I showed him where his eye is, and he took it right away.
The moral of this story is never underestimate to ability of your child's brain, and never wait too long to test them again for something because you might miss out on some of that precious learning time that you could be spending enhancing and educating their lives.
He had been given a few Baby Einstein DVDs and other educational videos as well at a very young age and I thought I'd try them out when he was an infant. I found out right away that he had a huge fascination with with the TV screen, even at his very young age. I also fell in love with the Baby Einstein DVDs and quickly had them all downloaded. He never has liked all of them but Baby's First Signs surely was one that he enjoyed. I thought it would be my ticket for him learning the signs as well. Somewhere on the sidelines in my brain I knew that unless I was going to be teaching him this stuff with first handed interactions that he wasn't going to learn them. And I was right, at 1 year (typically said three months into the time period that baby's are able to sign) he still didn't know any signs.
At 16 months I bought a great book call The Everything Toddler Activities book. It gave me the simple idea to teach my son to raise his arms high when I ask him "How big are you?" That is a baby sign, and that is right about when I realized how easy it would be to teach him simple signs, how cute it was to see him do it, and how fun it was for him. Of course his older age probably had a lot to do with it.
Tonight he amazed me. Sitting on our couch this evening and watching Ni Hao Kai Lan right before his bedtime he shocked me with his amazing little sponge brain. At this point (Him being 17 months old) he responds to "How big are you?" Waves bye and hi often, flips his hands over when he is "all done", and points to his nose and ears.
A little back story in this very long blog just to get you to where you need to be to appreciate this... a month or two ago we bought a hat/mask set from IKEA. A great little green dragon set for kids to play make believe with. My son loves it and Daddy ended up teaching him that Dinosaurs say, "Rawr", which he will say on command. When we say what does dinosaur say? He growls and points to his mask.
So back to the couch and Kai Lan...
The episode was about the dragon festival and they were racing some boats across a lake. He smiles and laughs all throughout the show and at the end a real dragon comes out. That's when he turns to me and growls, the same dragon way he does when we ask him what dinosaur says. It was brilliant, and maybe that's just his mother talking, but the way it all went down was so beautiful and inspired me to re-try the whole sign thing.
I tested him following that to see what he can absorb at this point. I showed him the sign for milk and he took it right away, then I showed him where his eye is, and he took it right away.
The moral of this story is never underestimate to ability of your child's brain, and never wait too long to test them again for something because you might miss out on some of that precious learning time that you could be spending enhancing and educating their lives.
Top Mommy Blogs - Vote for us @ TopMommyBlogs.Com!
No comments:
Post a Comment