Chapter summary

– When introducing signs, choose 5 motivating signs and 5 routine signs so that your baby has the best of both worlds.
– Routine signs are signs for things that happen throughout the day such as MILK, EAT, WATER and ALL DONE/FINISHED.
– Motivating signs are whatever your baby finds interesting, and these are baby specific.
– Always remain consistent with signing, so if you start to sign a word, stick to it.
– It’s not necessary to sign every word.
– It’s your choice to sign either sign 100 words, or just the ones you find important.
– Not all signs in ASL are equally as easy for a baby to do.
– Once baby has learned about a dozen signs they will begin to add signs exponentially which is referred to as the signing explosion.
– Sometimes a baby experiences lulls in signing such as when they are focused on a developmental milestone.