A Wonderful way to enhance communication with your baby!

I purchased this book when I was pregnant intending to teach sign language to my baby. As a speech-language pathologist, I recognized the value of early communication through the use of sign language. This book provides excellent information on how to introduce your own signs to your baby as well as fascinating stories about other childrens' experiences with using baby signs. The book is easy to follow and parents do not need to use a formal system of sign language. The book also contains a chapter of answers to parents' questions.

Teaching baby signs to my daughter was easy and fun to do. She has done very well with signing. At 13 months, she had an expressive sign vocabulary of almost 30 signs and could put 2 signs together to form a phrase. This was remarkable, since the average child doesn't put 2 words together until 18 months. Baby Signs has enabled my daughter to communicate earlier, allowed me to see what she really knows, and reduced her frustration in communicating. Now that she is speaking, she uses signs to clarify words I don't understand. What a wonderful gift this has been to our family!

I now teach a developmental play class for parents and infants. I teach baby signs as part of the class. Parents have been very enthusiastic about learning signs and I always recommend this book.

Fun to read but inadequate instructions for teaching sign

I read Baby Signs and Signing with Your Baby by Joseph Garcia. I do NOT recommend Baby Signs but highly recommend Signing with Your Baby by Joseph Garcia instead for the following reasons:
1. Mr. Garcia has a clearer plan for teaching sign language
2. Mr. Garcia teaches ASL rather than modified or invented signs used in Dr. Acredolo's book
3. Mr. Garcia has better illustrated sign instructions
4. Mr. Garcia's books is simply shorter and more succinct, more meat and less fluff than Dr. Acredolo's book

Dr. Acredolo's book is fun to read because of all the anecdotes about children using signs, and I understand the spirit of her book for using simplified or invented signs for babies. However, it was unsatisfying to be taught invented signs instead of true ASL. If learning another language, would one want to learn the baby babble version of that language? For me, the answer is clearly no.

Using Sign with Your Baby in conjunction with a class or videos such as the excellent Signing Time series provides an effective way to teach baby and parents sign language.

WONDERFUL to be able to communicate with baby before speech!

I read this book and began using the baby signs when Joey was almost 8 months old. I did them over and over and over until it got to the point of where I thought he would NEVER catch on. But I kept it up. And he DID catch on! It was amazing! He finally did his first sign (all done/gone) 3 months later - and they just snowballed from there. I even got to the point of making up signs that weren't in the book, or I'd alter the sign the book shows to fit my needs. Before he could fully talk, he could communicate to tell me if he was hurt, scared, hungry, thirsty, sleepy, etc. He could tell me he wanted his blanket or pacifier even if they were nowhere in sight. My husband, who was SO skeptical after so long with no results, was totally grateful. And parents, don't worry about speech; he continued to say words verbally as he learned new signs and could say about 10 words at 12-13 months. Joey was advanced in speech at his 18 mo. checkup, and he talked in sentences at nearly 21 months. He is now 23 months and says new words and sentence combinations every day. The signs HELP your baby's speech! I highly recommend this book to any and every parent out there. The rewards are wonderful.