A teachable moment is anytime that your baby is receptive and attentive to learning a sign.  Usually it stems from mutual gaze that starts at an object, then at each other and then again at the object.  This signals from baby to mother or father that an object has struck a cord and baby wants to learn more about it.

Teachable moments are excellent times to introduce new signs.  If they are missed, they might still arise at a later time, but the novelty the item has created may be less strong producing a weaker desire for baby to learn the sign.  In contrast, a highly motivated baby will do whatever possible to communicate about an item that has peeked their curiosity.  This is why it’s always best to strike at these occasions rather than wait for a later time when motivation is bound to be lower.  In fact, once objects become part of the regular background environment for you baby, they might prove to be even more difficult to teach than had they never been seen before.  Don’t worry too much about this though, as your baby’s interests will be constantly changing over time and eventually they will come full circle to learn and relearn just about all of the things that surround them.  What is important though, is to try to maximize your efficiency by seizing these moments.  This is even more important with a younger mind than an older one.  Young minds are ever distracted, moving from one thing to the next, while an older mind can focus and ignore outside distractions.

There are other times altogether when teaching signs is nearly impossible.  Never try to teach a baby to sign when they are hungry, tired or frustrated.  You want signing to be a fun activity between you and your baby.

I talk more about this in the course, but what you decide to teach, be it homesigns (made-up signs), or ASL will depend on your preferences, goals and needs.  For us, it was a no-brainer, we wanted to teach our son signs that others could understand and reference if need be.  Had we taught homesigns, others might not know what he was saying.  ASL is a universal language and so anyone with an ASL dictionary can figure out what our baby is saying.  A homesign is any sign you make up on your own.  While these can be fun to create and remain a secret language, they’ll give you grief if you leave your baby with a caregiver who isn’t privy to the signs meaning.  While you might not empathize with your caregiver, I’m sure your baby would like to be heard!

Homesigns can also present problems for you too.  In most cases, your baby is going to remember and adopt a sign once they’ve used it a few times.  However, with our busy schedules, we often let slip these little things.  After a few days your baby might do a sign, perhaps a bit differently than the homesign done previously and for the life of you, you can’t remember what it means!  What a sour experience for your baby!  Yeah, they’ll get over it, but it teaches them a bad lesson about language and about signing at large.  Words should be consistent and immutable and therefore carry meaning.  This is why adopting ASL is so much better for you and your child.  You have a ready dictionary to reference should you forget a sign and you can work toward refining them to look more proper.

The take-away message is pretty clear.  I highly recommend signing with ASL.  That’s not to say that you can’t add a homesign in here and there, just limit them to perhaps words for things that don’t have a decent ASL sign for.  Perhaps the name for a doll or blanket or something else personal.  Whatever homesigns you do you, take the time to record them.  A handy video camera can serve that purpose well – short of that just jot down some notes for a reference if you think you might forget.