Baby Signs

Without really thinking much about it we started trying to teach Oliver some sign language last week. As I reported earlier, he picked up the sign for “water” within minutes and now uses it all the time (and correctly). In the past few days he’s added a few more signs to his repertoire. He now does the sign for “all done” as well as “eat,” “ball,” and “more.” He will also wave when you say “bye-bye” or “night-night.” It’s been really cool to see him do all these signs but I worry that he’s not trying to say the words as he signs them (with the exception of “ball” which he says all the time). I don’t know much about baby signing and worry that it might slow him down in his verbal development instead of speed it up. We always use the word when we make the sign for Oliver but he’s not trying to make the sounds. I should probably do some research on it before we keep going.