Nia is now 14 months and growing! For the past 6 months she had been signing simple baby signs like "eat" "milk" "juice" and the most important thing of all......"potty".

We have been asked whether it "impedes" language development, personally speaking I am not a SLP to really say anything about it, I can only speak based on experience. Nia started to call us "mama" and "baba" as early as 9 months, and it is at the same time that she started to walk.

Study shows that baby signing "stimulates" language, cognitive and emotional development, and so far, according to her pediatrician she is way up in the curve.

Baby Signing has been a great help to us, to me, being a first time mom. And just to let you know how effective it was for us.

Last summer we took a long trip to the Philippines (22 hours to be exact), and Nia was that good (not to say she did not cry or whimper, she did) but she was that good, she got a free tour in the cockpit and got a "wing" for behaving so good during the trip.

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Speaking as a SLP, baby signing does NOT impede language development. I did it with my son, he signed his first word at 9 months ('duck') and 2 wks later started saying and signing 'more' on a consistent basis. Signing helped him have a way to request his basic needs. He never was one to have tons of tantrums -- not saying he had none, but he didn't have many. I truly think by giving him a way to communicate at such an early age helped decrease those tantrums. That is a mix of MHO as well as my professinoal opinion.

Research shows that baby signs DO NOT hinder language development.

To be honest, we, as parents, all get excited when our baby waves for the first time. Isn't waving a sign? Once your wee one starts signing, start truly truly paying attention to what they do with their hands, for they may start making signs of their own. My son did. At an early age -- want to say 11 or 12 months he was making up signs and once I figured them out, he was so excited to have another word to use with mommy and daddy.

Enough of my ramblings for the evening....

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