Squeeze and Open

While at work, I found some articles about signing to your baby. I had read about this before, but never paid much attention. This time, I spend some more time reading up on it. It’s an interesting concept – teaching your baby to sign before they can talk so they can communicate with you. 

No more frustrating attempts trying to understand what your baby wants. They can directly sign it to you. Or at least that’s the theory. And even though there are a lot of concerns about it, studies haven’t shown it to cause any speech delays. 

As I was looking at some YouTube clips of a baby demonstrating some signs (the baby looked like it was just flailing her arms around randomly), a co-worker walked by and asked what I was looking at. I said I was trying to learn some sign language to use with my baby. She hadn’t heard about this before, but gave me a gold star for wanting to do more than most deadbeat dads. 

However, she did have a bit of advice for me. She said, “Maybe you should learn how to change a diaper first before tackling sign language.” She has good point here. Maybe I’m in over my head trying to learn over 300 hand signs with my baby. I’m trying to do way too much all at once. I have never changed a diaper in my life before. How can I possibly progress to the next level if I don’t even have the basics down. 

But on a positive note, I now know the hand signal for milk (squeezing and opening your hand).