Reprinted with permission by Elizabeth Sprague

It is so important to follow your child’s lead in play. It is more difficult than one would think to catch yourself re-directing them back to your adult agenda, but practice makes perfect. While a parent is trying to put the train tracks together a child may be more interested in tearing them apart. Let them and talk about what happens when they are apart, how the train can’t drive without tracks, but a car can drive without tracks, a plane can fly without tracks or a person can walk without tracks. Child led play is an incredible chance to teach developmental skills.

I run into this a lot in my classes. We have different activities to help the babies learn their signs. Often one of the children will be more interested in playing with BeeBo than taking part in the puzzle play or the concept item toys. I try to let parents know that this is okay! Rather than re-directing your child back to the activity you want them to do again and again follow them and take part in what they are showing interest in. They are so much more likely to learn doing what they are interested in.

Using my above example; If your child wanders away from the puzzles or other toys to play with BeeBo, follow them. Put BeeBo (our big puppet bear) on and play with your child using the signs we are learning with the toys. If we are working on bathtime signs and your child wanders away to their diaper bag and pulls out their cereal, practice the cereal sign.

Teaching a baby to sign is not about sitting them down and forcing them to practice a certain set of signs. It’s about presenting signs for things that present themselves in your child’s life. Show them them mealtime signs when they are interested in eating. Show them bathtime signs when they have their bath.

Take them to the park and when they point out a duck to you show them the duck sign...

Take them to the park and when they point out a duck to you show them the duck sign, when you put them in the swing…. you get my point.

Child led play is not only important for learning signs. It is very important for any stage or area of development. Do you learn better when it’s a subject you are really interested in or when it’s a test for a pre-requisite to get you to where you want to be?

You will learn so much more of your child’s personality if you follow them to see what they are interested in. If you are constantly re-directing your child to what you think they should be doing you are sending the message that their agenda isn’t important.

Visit Elizabeth’s Blog for information on children, signing, and more!  You can also connect with Elizabeth on Twitter.

About the Baby Signs® Program

The Baby Signs® Program helps children develop both language and cognitive skills. Studies show that babies who sign actually develop speech sooner and have larger vocabularies when they do start talking.

The Baby Signs® Program is based on the groundbreaking research which began an international movement to teach hearing babies to use signs. After 20 years of careful study, researchers proved that using signs actually enhances language, cognitive, and social-emotional development. Click here to read more about this exciting research.

The Baby Signs Institute offers parent workshops and classes to teach parents how to use the Baby Signs® Program at home. To find out more about classes and products, please look through our website or send us an email with your questions. You can also visit the official Baby Signs® Benefits page for more information about the program.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study: Babies Who Gesture Learn Words Sooner (time.com)
• Once Upon a Time… The End… Once Upon a Time… The End. (Reading with Baby!) (hippiedippiebebe.com)
• Baby, Give Me a Sign (attachmentparenting.org)
• Peter Reckell Amazed at Daughter’s Sign Language (celebrity-babies.com)
• Toddlers point to make a point (cbc.ca)
• When toddlers point a lot, more words will follow (ctv.ca)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: Baby Signs, Baby Signs Program, Child, Infant Signing, Sign language, Speech

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.