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by A growing fad amongst Americans is communicating with their babies through sign language. As early as nine months old, infants are able to perform rudimentary signs to express themselves. To support this habit, numerous training centers have sprung up for teaching parents sign language. Signers have a choice of using either American or International Sign Language variations. While historically the domain of deaf communicators and Koko the gorilla, babies may soon emulate 'Little Jack' from Meet the Fockers.
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I work for Early Childhood Intervention, where I have many toddlers on my caseload who have language delays. I have found that teaching these children to sign their needs is a major relief to frustrated parents. I tell parents that the signs they chose to use don't necessarily have to be those of American or International Sign Language, as long as they are functional for the child. Of course, many parents have expressed fears that their child will use signing as a crutch, and prevent them from eventually using spoken language, but I have yet to see that happen with children who are not hearing impaired.
I always wondered how you can teach a child that is both blind and deaf.
I was a sign language interpreter for about 10 years (Flordia-RID QA 1), and we started signing to my son in the delivery room. By a year old he could sign many of his basic needs, and by 18 months he could sign all the letters of the alphabet, if you pointed to the letter on paper or said the letter name.
Once he started learning english he pretty much dropped signing, and was speaking rather complex sentences very early.
He's ten now, and functions very well in school, and has excellent spatial skills. He is a gifted student, but I'm not sure if that is purely a genetic thing, or combination - both my wife and I were gifted students.
When you say gifted, do you mean he has a very high IQ? Maybe he should start learning Chinese too. It's hard.
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? by Eye.Of.Sage :: NR6 :: on 28 July 2006
How do we know Koko actually learned to communicate, maybe it was just doing what the zoo keeper is telling her to do.
You know, I taught my turtle how to communicate too. When it's hungry, it swims toward me and tries to bite me. Or maybe it just wants to eat me
Koko & The Dentist by VnutZ :: NR8 :: on 28 July 2006
There was a case when Koko actually used her vocabulary to inform the zookeepers she required dental work. This was completely unprompted by the zoo and demonstrated an ability to use the language beyond circumstances in which it had previously been used.
(FYI - can you use real subject lines? It's difficult to navigate your posts in the recent comments section. You are receiving automatic 'hard to read' from the moderator/arbitrators because of it).
RE: Koko & The Dentist by Eye.Of.Sage :: NR6 :: on 28 July 2006
oops, my mistake. It's a habit, I always name my post with a question mark on neopet, sorry.
I don't know.......How smart are they really?