Tom signs “Teddy”

“Dear Jackie,

I have been signing with my baby since he was 7months old. Although I never gave up, I was pretty disheartened that at 12months he still wasn’t signing back. I kept going as I could see he understood some of the signs when I did them.

A couple of months ago I bought your book and read your recommendation to use fun signs as well as the practical ones. We had only been doing milk, bed, eat, drink, finished.

Ethan signs “Milk”

“Hi Jackie,

We began using baby sign 4 months ago and only in the last month our son Ethan who is now 9 months old started signing. I was so excited when he started to sign “hello”, “bye” and “milk” back at me and he then claps his hands afterwards as if proud of himself . I am now teaching him to sign “eat” which I’m sure he will learn in no time. I’m so proud of our little boy.

Nitara signs “Hello”

“Hello, We began using Baby Hands with Nitara just over a month ago now & she has really taken to it. As she is very dexterous baby and was already twinkling her fingers & making Mother Duck with her hand we knew she would take to signing straight away. At first she thought that we were very amusing making all these crazy gestures with our hands every time we said “Hello”, “Bye”, “Milk”, “Eat”, “drink”, “Mum”, “Dad” & “I love you”.

Matthew signs “Helicopter”

“I have found your site great! I can sign Auslan pretty well as I am hearing impaired but didn’t use a lot of sign with my first child as she is hearing and my husband is hearing too but when my son come along I decided to teach him signs. I found that I had to be patient and consistent as your site mentions and he is now 18 months old- still not talking apart from Mumma (he is hearing and understands everything so I am not worried), he can sign a few things and gets very excited when his sister and I cheer him on.

“I would like to thank you for your ingenious signing program.

My 2 year old son, Jesse, has picked it up with such ease and it is such a wonderful sight when he comes
up to me and tells me both spoken and signing that he wants to have a bath, or a drink, or play with the
dogs, cat, birds.

It is breathtaking and such a contrast to 6 months ago when he would be crying, yelling and so upset
because as hard as we tried, we just could not comprehend what he was asking for.

I am just 6 weeks away from having my second son and we will be using our signs from the first day in
hospital to get into the routine. We only wished that we had of heard of this fantastic program when we
were pregnant with our first beautiful son.

Thanks again, you have improve our communication with our son a milliojun times over!!!!!”

Dianna, Brian and Jesse Ray
Andergrove, Qld

James signs “Drink”

“I have found your site great! I can sign Auslan pretty well as I am hearing impaired but didn’t use a lot of sign with my first child as she is hearing and my husband is hearing too but when my son come along I decided to teach him signs. I found that I had to be patient and consistent as your site mentions and he is now 18 months old- still not talking apart from Mumma (he is hearing and understands everything so I am not worried), he can sign a few things and gets very excited when his sister and I cheer him on.

“Hi Jackie, well reading the other stories of bubs signing I knew I had to write and share our success.

We have been signing to Anneka from about 1 month old (some might think this is a bit earlier but it was more about getting my husband and I into the habit – like you suggest a few key signs and we were on our way.

The funniest to date is whenever the vacuum cleaner or hair dryer are used we often see Anneka busy playing, stop turn, look have a bit of a giggle and then do the sign for noise! Sometimes she also gets a bit over excited (as she is in this picture!).

“Hi Jackie,

I am so pleased to let you know that my son Mylo has finally started to sign! It has taken a while and we
have not been the best teachers, but he now signs eat, bath, drink, sleep and more. It makes life so much
easier and he seems to really love the fact that he can tell us what he wants. We are now working on
please/thank you, ball and dog.Take care”

Jess Maude and Mylo
Brunswick West, VIC

“I thought Clay was never going to start signing even though I had been doing it since he was 4 months old.
Finally at 10 months he starting doing ‘dog’ and saying ‘dog’. At 11 months he was doing ‘eat’ for both
eating and drinking. Now at 12 months he does ‘horse’ and has just started doing ‘drink’ and ‘milk’.

My friends with babies think its great that I can communicate with him.
If he sees a dog on TV or a picture he tells us as he loves them. Lots of animals get called dogs.

This is just fantastic.”

Tania O’Brien
Perth, WA

Jed Signing “more”

“I have been signing with my 19 month old (hearing) son, Jed since he was about 11 months. It is amazing how quickly he learns and applies the signs that I teach him. I just love how he can communicate with me in a variety of situations.
When we arrive home and are in the driveway he gets excited and does the sign for house, if he hears a bird chirping, he signs bird. He can also sign toilet and has had many a dry nappy before we get to the bathroom.
His favourite sign would have to be more, which he now combines with saying

“Hi Jackie

I thought I would let you know how Bella and I are going at signing.

Bella is now 14 months old. I started signing milk to her at around 5 mths. From the age of about 8 mths I
really got stuck in to it. By approximately 9 months old Bella was signing milk back to us. Bella can now
sign milk, mum, drink, eat, and more and now nappy as of last night. My husband has been signing as well.
We also got Bella’s childcare teachers to sign in her room which is good so she has the signing at home and
at childcare. My next goal is to teach her a new sign each week or fortnight.

I always intended on teaching my daughter to sign after I worked in a special education unit at a local state
school for a while. I believe it will help her with her communication. I will teach her to sign her ABC and
colours when she is a little older as well.”

Michelle McIntosh
Oxenford Queensland

Charlotte signs “please”

“Good Morning Jackie.

My daughter Charlottes signing just gets better every week and I love being able to communicate with her so easily.

She is 16 months old and we have been signing for about the last 6 months thru our day care centre.

“Two months ago, my then 18 month old son, had yet another massive asthma attack. This time was worse
than any other; he actually stopped breathing and spent 24 hours in ICU. When he was alert enough to
realise he needed a drink, he used sign language to ask for a drink of milk.

He continued signing for a further 24 hours using milk, food, thank-you and hello. After this period he
continued speaking, but still to this day he will sign and speak many words at the same time.

Thank you for bringing communication to our little people long before they can easily be verbally
interpreted.”

Sincerely,

Loren Costello.
Belmont WA

Isabelle signs “Mum”

“Hi Jackie, I really enjoy receiving your regular emails and your photos of signing little ones always brings a smile to my face. Isabelle has been signing for a couple of months now and I finally managed to capture her signing “Mum” as I walked down the corridor at our house calling out to her. The photo is a bit side-on but it’s so hard to capture a good shot with a split second sign!

I am a speech pathologist (although I haven’t returned to work yet) so I know the benefits of signing and had always planned to do so with my own children. My husband was a little sceptical (to say the least!) and did not sign in the early days

“I thought it was time for me to tell you our story.

I have been using Auslan for years as I work in a Special School and have always treated sign language as
part of an Augmentative Communication System, ie, often if the child can’t say/read a word, they can sign
it, particularly in times of stress. It also helps to take the talking/verbals out of a stressful situation.
I have found it to be invaluable in my work. I also feel that it more often than not enhances a child’s grasp
of language than hinder it.

Around 8 months of age Amy began throwing her spoon and food when she’d had enough so I introduced the sign
for ‘finished’. That was when we began with Baby Hands. She is now 17months and has a great repertoire- more,
finished, drink, hat, cow, duck, frog, dog, cat, milk- just off the top of my head. Our newest one is ‘toilet’
trying to stop her from grabbing her crotch and saying ‘yuck’- very elegant.

Baby hands has been fantastic for us- I’ve given a copy of the signs she knows to her Family Day Carer who has
been using them with all of the children and has had enquiries from their parents as well.

Thanks for everything,”

Helen List
Darwin

“Hi there just to let you know how we are doing using the baby signs chart…
As mum to Montana 4yrs, Hunter 3yrs and Andersyn 5 mths we have found the chart to be a very valuable tool, Hunter has down syndrome and with this he no longer get frustrated when trying to communicate with us have introduced baby sign to all 3 of our children who all have picked this up very easily…

“Hi Jackie,

I thought it was time for me to tell you our story.
I have been using Auslan for years as I work in a Special School and have always treated sign language as part of an Augmentative Communication System, ie, often if the child can’t say/read a word, they can sign it, particularly in times of stress. It also helps to take the talking/verbals out of a stressful situation. I have found it to be invaluable in my work. I also feel that it more often than not enhances a child’s grasp of language than hinder it.

“Hi Jackie.

When my son was born 3 1/2 years ago, he had a few medical problems and one of them was that he could not breathe normally. He needed a trachy (tube in his neck) to breathe until he could hopefully grow out of it. We decided to start to learn sign language so that we could communicate with him not knowing if or when he would grow out of the trachy. It was so difficult to find info on baby signing.