31 For 21: Day 17...Signing Times!

Okay, I admit it.  I'm not the best at following through on things.  Sometimes that even includes things that might be important to my kids.  When Andrew was first born, I learned that many children with Ds use sign language as a means to communicate before they can talk.  So we went out and bought the first two Signing Times DVDs...the Baby Signing Time series.

We still haven't learned signs for chicken or ketchup.

Andrew started watching "Baby Signing Time" when he was very young, before he was a year old.  We even collected more videos for his first birthday and Christmas.  He liked to watch them...sometimes.  We would learn the signs for things that he needed most often.  But then this difficulty with following through began.  We needed to learn more signs for common items, signs like "ketchup" and "chicken" that were not taught on the DVDs.  I never remembered to look up the signs when I was sitting at the computer, so every night at dinner we would ask Andrew what he wanted to eat, and if he wanted ketchup with his chicken and we kept saying that we really should look up those signs.

Soon after Andrew turned one, he began trying to talk more.  His first word was "more" followed by "dada."  His speech therapist continued signing with him during his sessions.  We crept along with signing until Andrew decided to stop speaking.  The word "more" turned into the sign for "more" even though he had been able to say it for months.  We learned that Andrew had excess fluid in his ears, most likely causing him to not be able to hear us speak to him.  A short surgery to insert ear tubes quickly cleared the fluid in his ears, but the signing persisted and it took a long time for Andrew to learn to speak "more" again.  I was convinced that once he learned a sign, he wouldn't speak the word...the sign was so much easier for him.  I discontinued signed altogether.

At Andrew's transition meeting before he entered preschool in December 2009, the speech therapist noticed that we were not signing with him.  I stated my reasoning behind it, and she could see my point-of-view, but felt that the signing would be necessary for Andrew to communicate with his teachers and with me until he was speaking clearly.  Even though I wasn't sure that pushing signing again with Andrew would help him, I agreed to try signing again.  Months went by, follow through on signing was neglected...AGAIN.  Finally, I pulled out the Signing Time DVDs and started with Baby Signing Time Volume 1, figuring that when Andrew either re-learned the signs or got tired of it, I would move on to the next DVD.  I was so tired of watching SpongeBob and Barney, I thought I'd try again, just to keep my sanity.

Andrew's response to the DVDs was shocking!  He was picking up all the signs, and quickly.  Hailey was even enjoying it too.  They continued to ask for the DVDs whenever it was time to settle down after dinner with some TV before bed.  Andrew started saying, "Baby Time, Baby Time."  Then he would sign "Baby Signing Time."  He was actually speaking and signing at the same time, consistently!  Plus, he started learning the words that coincided with each sign.  He was speaking new words every day.

Not only did Andrew learn every sign in both "Baby Signing Time" DVDs, but he learned how to speak each one of them as well.  His vocabulary more than doubled in less than a month.  His speech has progressed more than with just speech therapy alone.  As thrilled as I was with his success, I also felt guilty.  I wondered if Andrew would be much more ahead, with more developed speech had I continued with the Signing Time DVDs earlier.  Maybe he could be speaking sentences by now...maybe he would be understood by his classmates.  The questions kept hitting me over and over again.  Did I do an injustice to Andrew by insisting that signing was preventing him from speaking?

Do we ever really stop second-guessing ourselves as parents?  Andrew was my first child, so I never knew what was "normal"  in terms of development, what was "normal" in terms of teaching your child how to speak.  With Hailey, everything just came naturally.  We didn't have to teach her to roll from her back to her front, how to crawl, or even how to walk.  After months and months of working with Andrew to achieve his milestones, it was so strange to me that Hailey did everything on her own.  I thought his speech would progress in the same way...continue to work on it, use the prompting skills I learned in his speech therapy sessions and practice, practice, and more practice.  Watching the DVDs was so different, and they were fun, filled with music, silly songs and lots of kids to watch.  We all now look forward to watching the DVDs every night before bed.  Andrew's birthday and Christmas are coming up again and I will be asking his relatives and Santa for more to watch.