Some signs will be more difficult for your baby to sign than others. It works out really well that many of the first signs you will want to teach are relatively easy to perform. MORE, EAT, ALL DONE, and even MILK do not require too much fine motor coordination for your baby. Although he will likely demonstrate an approximation of each of these signs for quite some time, you will easily be able to figure out what he is trying to tell you.
As your baby gets older and becomes more adept at signing and more eager to know the sign for everything, you may introduce signs that are more difficult either because of the coordination involved in performing them, because they involve more than one step, or because your baby doesn’t yet have the body awareness to mimic you when you do them.
Our son could not do the sign for OWL properly for the longest time. Despite his best efforts, he just couldn’t bring his hands to his eyes. They would always end up elsewhere on his face or out in front of his face. It was really quite cute to watch him try!
Another sign that has recently given him some difficulty is BLACK. I would have thought it would be easy to learn as it only involves drawing the index finger above the eyebrows from one side of the forehead to the other. However, he always drags his finger along the side or back of his head! Again, it’s really quite funny to see when you know what he’s trying to do.
It doesn’t bother me at all that he can’t do some signs when he first learns them. Experience has taught me that he will do his best approximation until one day when he will just be able to do the sign properly. For some signs it takes some extra effort as far as modeling and guiding him, but in the end, he always gets it!