sign language?

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I've been reading a lot about how teaching infants sign language can help them communicate what they need before they can talk. Has anyone here tried this, and do you think it could help with young aspie children who are late talkers?

The article came out long after my son was diagnosed, but I'd definitely do it if I had a second child. Really good special ed teachers (or their aides) already use sign language for all special needs kids to augment communication.
My son used sign language almost immediately after seeing it. His regular ed kindergarten class used it too. I've learned some words and gestures that work better than verbal commands.

I'm nog sure what the article is about but we've been using a combination of bliss symbols, pictograms and pictures of classmates and so on. Not that neither of my sons are illiterate but they have trouble sometimes with written language. It's a mess when you have three kids with various needs to be able to keep up with them.

I think this is a very interesting topic of discussion! So please keep up this thread.

Does anyone know when you ntroduce sign laguage? Is it just after birth you sign whenever present something you sign along with it? I assume this is how it's done, but I'm just not sure ^^;

Check this out: http://www.signingtime.com/

The article I read when the study came out said just start it whenever. There were babies as young as 6 months that could understand and 8 months that could sign. If I remember right.

I would be a little wary of doing this, because my only experience with a mother teaching her young toddler to sign meant that he signed a LOT more than he talked. Yes, he could communicate, but not with anyone who couldn't sign.

Kris

That's a popular myth and one that studies have shown isn't necessarily true. Perhaps that boy had other speech delays or she wasn't speaking while signing to reinforce what the signs meant. Or maybe he just liked it better than speaking.

We did signing from birth with both my kids. One has a pending spectrum diagnosis, and pretty big speech delays (i.e. he is like me). The signs have been a really awesome tool for him to communicate his basic needs to us (food, water, hurt, all done etc). Without signs we would not know when he is finished with something unless we just kept on till he cried or melted down.

So yeah as an aspie parent of a spectrum child, I am saying that signs were a life saver.

That's good to hear about your son, shaggydaddy.

I guess I wasn't thinking in terms of signing and how helpful it could be to someone on the spectrum.

I just know with this other little guy that signing was great for him, but he wasn't learning to speak. And yes, I think he just preferred signing to speaking. He lived in our area for about a year, and I never saw him speak to anyone. He probably did learn eventually, but if someone was using signing as a stepping stone to speech, I don't think it worked that way, initially, for this child.

Kris

maybe it is the aspie in me, but speech isn't as important to me as communication. If he had all of his needs met and could sign his concerns/wants/needs, I just don't see the problem.

I prefer Texting/messenger/email to speech, and I am a productive adult with a good job and a loving family.

Sign language is a good thing for any child to learn, and is especially benifical for children on the spectrome. I've never lookedmuch into this baby sign language yet so can't comment to much on that. Aspies tend to have high verbal IQ's so its usually nonverbal communication thats their main problem. Considering that statistics say about 70-85% of what people say is nonverbal this can be a pretty big problem.

I have tried 3 times to reply to this message over the last 3 days. Here is my response in parts because I don't want to waste time typing it if it's not going to get through.

We signed with our son. He learned 12 signs, he dropped the signs when he learned to speak, he said his first meaningful word at 12 months, speaks wonderfully now, his dx is pointing toward Aspergers, i think, so I don't think he would've had a language delay anyway if we hadn't signed. Or perhaps signing helped pull him out so he doesn't have a more severe dx ??? But what i know that it did for sure was help him express himself before he could talk, which I am positive cut down on the # of tantrums he had. It made him feel more understood, which I am sure did a world of good for him.

These are some tips we learned from our baby signing class.

We learned American Sign Language instead of the Baby Sign, because it will come in handy if your child ever needs to actually learn sign language.

They recommend starting with 3 universally important and easy signs- more, finished, and milk.
Once your child learns to sign one, add one more. You can start adding ones that you think will be most useful for your child. We did a lot of food names because he was quite into foods at the time.

We started at 6 months, but it doesn't matter when you start. I almost gave up because it didn't seem like it was making any difference. Then one day out of the blue, he started. I think he started at about 10 months and started speaking 2 months later. After he started talking really well, we just stopped the signing all together.

One wierd thing about signing is that I did not realize my son was a hand flapper until just last month when I saw a child doing it on one of those online Austism videos. Whenever he flapped, I just assumed he was signing "more," which it eventually became.

Sometimes he would sign "more" with one hand and actually mean more. The rest of the times, I think, he was just flapping and I just shoved more food in his face! Poor guy. So don't mistake flapping for signing, and I think it will work out great.

I just heard a positive for sign language --

My nephew's little girl has Turner's Syndrome, and apparently that diagnosis has some delayed language problems as well. They began to teach her sign, and she has about 150 words in sign language (at 18 months of age), and about 175-200 SPOKEN words. She hadn't been talking very much before sign language, so apparently things clicked for her as well with the learning of signs.

Kris