This book is an expansion on the Fast Track book of baby sign language published earlier, with additional content and theory. The word “theory”, in this context, refers to completeness of the information coupled with all its practical application. By reading this book through, you will learn more than just the basics necessary to teach your baby to sign successfully. In fact, the book is meant to bring you completely up to speed on what baby signing is all about, and how it works. It will also permit you to teach your baby to sign however you so choose, by developing your own teaching methods. This means you can carry it out at your own pace and comfort with a baby at any age.
Above: Holden told us that the DUCK SCARED him. His solution was to bring the duck out of his room so he felt safe to sleep at night. Many parents might be left wondering what the problem is, but with signs, knowing what’s up is much easier. The sign for SCARED is an advanced sign, but one that should be taught to a child as soon as possible to make bed-time run more smoothly. As Holden aged, he grew to love the duck and it’s song, but always keep in mind that baby and toddler minds work differently and sometime things we assume are fun, are actually terrifying to our children!
By reading through this guide you will gain valuable insights into signing for babies that cannot be conveyed with a simple step-by-step process. If you wish to get right to signing, and aren’t concerned about ‘why’ you are doing what you are doing, then please skip right to the Fast Track To Signing Program which accompanies this course. Therein, you will find just the basics, with the bulk of the information boiled off into an easy and quick recipe to signing with your baby.
The fast track program requires that baby be at least 11 months old in order to meet our target-to-sign which is, at most 8 weeks. If your baby is younger than 11 months, then reading this book is the right thing to do because it will enable you to tailor produce your own system to teach your baby. Babies have been known to sign back as early as 4 months! However, the majority do very well at the 10 month plus mark. If you want to get started on some basic signs with your pre-11-month old baby, than this book will help you do just that.
If you have the time, I highly recommend reading this guide book through rather than just rushing in to signing immediately. This book covers everything you ever wanted to know about signing with your baby. It will help you sign with a baby of any age, from newborn, right through to 3-years.
The Fast Track to Signing Program which accompanies the system, on the other hand, is a step-by-step method of teaching your baby to sign within 8 weeks tops. It does not dwell on theories, or reasons for doing what is outlined, it takes these concepts for granted. It will be your choice to skip this book which is the long version in favour of the fast track to signing. It should be noted, however, that the fast track program requires an 11-month-old baby to start. If this doesn’t describe your situation, and you don’t want to sit idle, then your time will be best filled by reading and starting to sign at your own pace by following the teachings in this book.
Not only this, but the concepts taught here will permit you to start signing with your baby much sooner than 11 months. What we won’t do though, is make guarantees that your baby will start signing back within a certain time frame, as one of the most important variables to signing is your baby’s ability, and this is strongly correlated to age. Every baby is different though, but like anything else a baby will do, signing will start just as soon as baby is ready, and not a moment sooner! All this notwithstanding, many babies do start signing back much earlier than 11 months, some as early as 6 months, so rest assured that this book is well worth reading. What you won’t get in the fast track program, though, but of which is covered extensively here, are ways to deal with special cases, troubleshooting, and other issues that arise during the signing process. If you want to really learn about signing, this is the place to be!
Above: Books are a great way to encourage signing! In this video we sign BOOK, GORILLA, PENGUIN, GIRAFFE, BUFFALO, MONKEY, SEAL, CAT, CROCODILE, CAMEL, HORSE, ELEPHANT, BEAR, BABY, TREE, SQUIRREL, BIRD, SKUNK, DEER, SNAKE, OWL and BEAR.