Toddlers are wonderfully creative and when they’ve been taught to sign, they’ll use this avenue to express themselves just as they would any other. This is why you should come to expect that your signing baby will eventually make a sign up! If you’re armed and ready for all interests, you might stifle this tendency, but even this might cause your baby to label things to their choosing since their understanding of sign language will be greater.
After a while your baby understands that hand movements and actions have meaning. Your baby might make something up by twisting their hands in specific and repeated ways while even holding their fingers in a specific handshape! This is a demonstration of their real understanding of sign language and is a milestone within baby sign language. What happens next is up to you. You can let it slip by and celebrate it, or correct it with the correct ASL version. This will be entirely up to you and will depend on your ultimate aim with baby sign language. Will you continue with it as a second language or will you eventually drop signs?
The more brazen of children will also insist that certain things are different from what they are. This is a clear illustration of the type of personality they have. For example, some babies might insist that an APPLE is actually a BALL or vice versa. Even after cutting up the apple and serving it to your baby, he still might insist that he ate a ball! Yes, your baby is a bit stubborn! This is why signing is so great, it helps us learn about our babies much before we could otherwise.