Can Babies Understand Tik Tok?

I have tried various different sites to learn sign language.. and to be honest, I didn’t expect much from Tik Toc. I mean, how much can you learn in just a small video clip…. Well.. it turns out.. quite a bit! Take this Tic Toc for example.

smartguy85

Here, I learned several family signs I didn’t already know!

Signs with Jess

is another Tic Toc I found. Jess teaches signs that you can teach your children. I liked her lesson a lot actually, She managed to cram a lot of information into one Tic Toc.

I actually did know that many people teach their babies and small children sign language. I never tried it, but I have always been curious. The point is to teach babies simple every day signs they can use to communicate since they can’t talk yet.

According to The Bump.com  baby sign language is not technically American Sign Language because that is actually quite a bit more complex. Instead they are simple gestures that babies can do. There are apparently quite a few benefits to teaching your baby sign language. Who wouldn’t want the chance to know what was wrong with their little one given the opportunity? Most parents just guess, or know what upsets their child most of the time, but what if baby could tell you? Some of these benefits are:

• increases baby’s ability to communicate before they can speak
• Leads to fewer tantrums, since baby can get their message across
• Lowers frustration for parents, since you can understand what baby wants or needs
• Gives baby a head start in language acquisition
• Strengthens baby’s cognitive skills
• Enhances parent-baby bonding (Neuman, Sept. 28, 2022

Different “experts” disagree about exactly when you should start baby sign language. Today.com says that you should start at about 8-12 months. Another website told me that 4-12 months was optimal.

All of the different sites where I read about teaching baby sign said that the way to teach them to sign was to say the word and make the sign at the same time. Repetition is important and so is practicality. For example, words like milk, change, hungry, food ect. are words you might want to teach first.

There are some books for littles about baby signs. You can pick them up on Amazon.

Baby Signs by Joy Allen

Baby Signing Bible by Laura Berg is another.

It is too big to post here, but here is a link to a chart if you would like a copy. It is free here

Finally, There is this Tik Tok by Gabriel Manalo

I prefer to learn sign language from someone who is deaf. A person who signs all of the time is more likely to know the sign language “slang” for things. They will also be more inclined to remind you that facial expression while signing is an important part of communicating, probably almost as important as signing. That is one area I don’t do as well at.

Hope you will try some of these out! Have fun signing!