OMG BABY SIGN LANGUAGE
YES, you read right. Babies are speaking sign language.
I recently visited my college bestie Jess in the UK, and finally got to meet her AMAZING identical twin boys, Will and Arlo. I was astounded at how many words they were both speaking, and even more so when I saw them use sign language.
We were at the park, and the twins started doing a funky little hand movement simultaneously. Like this 👌🏼, but it flutters! I understand that identical twins are in sync, but this was weird. It felt like both one-year-olds were trying to tell me the same thing.
“Jess, what’s this?” I ask, showing her the little hand movement.
“Oh, that’s a bird,” she said nonchalantly.
Like, duh. I looked at the tree where the boys had been waving their hands, and saw a sparrow fluttering up to its branches.
“Right…” I said, looking at Will —or was it Arlo?— as he moved his attention to the ball that had bounced over from the playground. Was there a sign for that too?
”I’ve been taking them to baby sign language class,” she said.
Jess has always been #goals, from her killer writing, to her boho chic life and family, to her sweet, giving nature. It was so cool to see what an active, hands-on mom she is, and how developed her kids are as a consequence! In my time and travels throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North America, not all the new parents I had talked to had heard of or were using baby sign language.
I got insight from Lubna, who is using baby sign language with her 2-year-old twin nephew and niece in New York, that you have to be strategic when using baby sign language.
“If a baby signs something to you, you should respond accordingly.
So, if my niece signs that she’s hungry, I should show her I understand by giving her a piece of bread. If she signs “I love you” then I should sign back “I love you too” instead of whipping my phone out for a quick Instagram story of my freaking adorable niece.”
Oops! So when Will and Arlo were signing about the bird, the supportive thing to have done was to turn around, look at the bird and also sign “bird.” Now I know! There are lots of baby sign resources, and there have even been scientific studies done that show babies can learn sign language just from watching videos. Another friend, Nauf (whose story I’ll write about in an upcoming post), says of teaching her daughter sign language,
“I know it saved us so many tantrums and meltdowns!”
It seems particularly useful to use baby sign language to know when your babies are in pain (when they’re teething, for example, so that you can give them medicine). And sometimes it can be hilarious. Take, for example, when the twins both started signing “more” after I did a super groovy interpretation of the chicken dance for them. Or this little guy from Meet the Fockers!