A Sign of the Times

A couple of months ago, dd was sitting on my lap and I was sitting in my desk chair. She kept pointing to my desk at something (I forget now what), indicating that she wanted it. I kept telling her that it wasn't something that was safe for her to play with. After a few rounds of this, she looked at me and with a look of desperation she made the sign for "book." OH! Said I. The thing I didn't want her to play with was sitting on top of one of HER books. More recently we were visiting at dear hubby's mother's house where his stepsister and family were staying for a few days. DD entertained them all by showing them all the signs she knows. It seems that stepsis's kids learn sign-language at school, and are made to use certain signs to communicate with the teacher. While dd is quite shy when it comes to talking in front of people she doesn't know well, she showed no hesitation with communicating with signs! Many months ago her grandmother gave her a Baby Einstein video that contains some sign language instruction. She enjoyed it so much that her grandmother bought her several "Signing Times" videos - videos created for and with children to teach hearing children sign-language. DD loves to learn the signs. Her favorite and most used sign at the moment is "more." One of the benefits of teaching a young child sign-language, according to the folks who created "Signing Times", is that is "virtually eliminates" the "terrible twos", as it gives a child the ability to express herself when words don't do the trick. I love that she has so much fun with it - we do too! Apparently there is a television series now, which, unfortunately, won't get to the east coast until January. Who knows where this will lead us. I have been hoping to find a way to volunteer with dd...perhaps we could do something which involves signing in some way. Hm.