How to start using sign language with your baby

Learn the best signs to help your baby start out in their journey with baby sign language. Heather Ellington, baby sign language teacher, shares her expert opinion on how to begin teaching sign language to your child.
Baby Sign Language: How and When to Start with your Baby
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How to start using sign language with your baby

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You can start teaching your baby sign language any time. It’s more about when you’re ready to start teaching your baby sign language. So once you’re ready to start signing and saying the words that you’re teaching every single time then you’re ready. Once you start teaching, you want to start with 2 or 3 signs and then add more on as you’re comfortable, saying and signing the words every single time. So, for example, you might want to start with your daily routine signs, so food, or bath time, or even diaper changes. One of the signs that I like to teach – or I like to recommend to parents to teach their babies first – is a sign ‘more’. You take two closed hand shapes and bounce them together. Everything is new to your baby at this point, so adding sign language is just one more new thing that they’re ready to learn.

Learn the best signs to help your baby start out in their journey with baby sign language. Heather Ellington, baby sign language teacher, shares her expert opinion on how to begin teaching sign language to your child.

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Heather Ellington

Baby Sign Language Instructor

Heather graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Special Education in 2007 and is currently pursuing her Masters of Science in Communicative Disorders and Sciences at California State University, Northridge. Heather began learning ASL in college, and has volunteered for an inclusion class for Deaf/Hard of Hearing and Multiple Disabilities at the elementary school level, where she also worked as an interpreter. Heather marvels at the way sign language has helped children, babies, and parents get their needs met effectively and in a fun way, while promoting literacy, speech, and language development.

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Transcription: 
You can start teaching your baby sign language any time. It’s more about when you’re ready to start teaching your baby sign language. So once you’re ready to start signing and saying the words that you’re teaching every single time then you’re ready. Once you start teaching, you want to start with 2 or 3 signs and then add more on as you’re comfortable, saying and signing the words every single time. So, for example, you might want to start with your daily routine signs, so food, or bath time, or even diaper changes. One of the signs that I like to teach – or I like to recommend to parents to teach their babies first – is a sign ‘more’. You take two closed hand shapes and bounce them together. Everything is new to your baby at this point, so adding sign language is just one more new thing that they’re ready to learn.