There was a time when it took literally seconds for my son to pick up a sign. I’m not trying to brag because I don’t think my experience is extraordinary at all. This signing explosion is just an alignment with your baby’s ability to move their bodies mechanically, their brain’s development, their preexisting vocabulary and all the things that go along with it such as the patterns they learned as they worked through the others, the similarity signs all have, their ability to focus on your hands, voice and mouth along with theirs and so forth. Think of the signing explosion like teaching a 20 year old to add and subtract with simple numbers even if they hadn’t do so before. This task is so much easier for a brain that is ripe than one that isn’t ripe enough to accept or deal with the information.
When you toddler hits the magic age, usually around 18 months or just before, they can expect to pick up a sign or two each day. At one point in time, my son had no signs he was working on, he had learned them all. This happened mid-15 months toward the beginning of his 16th month. We taught him a bunch of signs like PUMPKIN, CAMEL, PIG, SHEEP and so forth the same day we visited the farm in the fall. The next day we taught him ICE CREAM in one sitting and easily reviewed the signs he learned the day before by looking over the images on the computer. So don’t be surprised that by using the right teaching methods, that your baby picks up signs just as fast.