Enhancing Communication and Safety

Celebrating National Baby Safety Month with the Baby Signs® Program

Welcoming a new baby into your life is an exhilarating experience, accompanied by immense joy and a strong desire to keep your little one safe. As parents and caregivers, ensuring the safety and well-being of your baby becomes a top priority. This National Baby Safety Month, let's explore an innovative way to enhance communication and safety for your baby: Baby Signs®.

The Importance of Baby Safety

September is celebrated as National Baby Safety Month, a time when parents, caregivers, and communities come together to raise awareness about the safety measures necessary for infants and young children. From creating safe sleep environments and securing furniture to practicing car seat safety, this month encourages everyone to take proactive steps to protect the youngest members of our society.

Baby Signs®: A Gateway to Effective Communication

In the journey of parenting, communication takes on an entirely new dimension with the arrival of a baby. While babies may not be able to verbally express themselves, they are incredibly receptive to communication cues. This is where the Baby Signs® Program comes into play. Baby Signs® is a program that teaches babies and toddlers simple sign language to help them communicate their needs, feelings, and thoughts well before they can speak.

How Baby Signs® Work

The Baby Signs® Program utilizes basic American Sign Language (ASL) that are tailored to suit the motor skills of pre-verbal infants and toddlers. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to use these signs in conjunction with verbal language to create a comprehensive mode of communication. The benefits of Baby Signs® extend beyond enhancing communication – they can also play a significant role in promoting safety.

"I Know What To Do" music from the If You're Happy & You Know It album and the MORE Sign, Say & Play™ Safety Class"

Baby Signs® and Safety

Expressing Needs: Babies often have a difficult time conveying their needs, leading to frustration. By teaching them signs for essentials like "eat," "milk," "diaper," and "sleep," parents can respond more effectively to their baby's needs, reducing instances of discomfort and distress.

Emergency Signs: Teach your baby signs that relate to safety, such as "help," "hurt," or "hot." In the event of an unforeseen situation, the baby's ability to use these signs could potentially alert caregivers to any issues they may be experiencing.

Identifying Allergies or Discomfort: Signs like "hurt" or "hot" can empower babies to indicate when something is wrong. This could be especially valuable in cases where a baby is too young to verbally express discomfort, such as experiencing an allergic reaction.

Instructional Signs: As babies grow into toddlers and begin to explore their surroundings, teaching signs like "stop," "dirty," and "wait" can contribute to their safety by helping them understand boundaries and potential hazards.

National Baby Safety Month and Baby Signs®: A Perfect Pair

As we celebrate National Baby Safety Month, incorporating infant sign language into your parenting toolkit can be a wonderful way to enhance both communication and safety. By giving your baby the means to express themselves and enabling them to understand important safety-related signs, you're taking proactive steps to ensure their well-being.

Incorporating the Baby Signs® Program into your daily routine doesn't require extensive effort. There are resources available online, including videos, books, music, and classes, that can guide you through the process. By dedicating time to learn and practice these signs, you're investing in your baby's development and safety.

National Baby Safety Month serves as a powerful reminder of the responsibility we have to protect and nurture our youngest family members. This September, consider the incredible potential of Baby Signs® in enhancing communication and safety for your baby. By embracing this innovative approach, you're not only providing a means for your baby to express themselves, but you're also empowering them to participate actively in their own safety and well-being journey.

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Teach your baby safety signs like Afraid, All Done, Dirty, Fast/Slow, Gentle, Hot, Hot/Cold, Hurt, Listen, Mask, Quiet, Sit Down, Stop, Up/Down, Wait and Wash. Order the Safety Signs Printable Poster Pack!

Resources and additional safety tips:

https://www.jpma.org/page/baby_safety_month
https://www.safekids.org/blog/5-tips-new-parents-during-baby-safety-month
https://www.cpsc.gov/Safety-Education/Safety-Guides/Cribs-Kids-and-Babies/Baby-Safety-Month

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#BabySigns #babysignlanguage #BabySafetyMonth #EarlyCommunication #ParentingTips #SignLanguageForBabies

Keeping the Bough from Breaking: Signing and Attachment

Keeping the Bough from Breaking:

Signing and Attachment

By Linda Acredolo, Ph.D

The Baby Signs Partnership

What do you think is the optimal age for a child to be adopted?  If you’re like most people, your answer is “at birth.”  It just seems like common sense to us today. 

Unfortunately, however, for centuries of adopted children that was not the typical answer.  Even as late as the 1930s and 40s, well-known developmental psychologists argued that adoption at age 2 made the most sense—in order to ensure that the adoptive parents knew what they were getting!  What no one knew then, but we know now, is that by waiting until age 2, adopting families were quite likely to be getting a child whose future emotional development had been put at risk.  As hard as it is to believe today, no one thought it mattered what happened to a child during the first two years as long as his or her physical needs were taken care of. 

Recent research has drastically changed this early view of infancy.  We now know that a secure emotional bond with loving parents during infancy lays the foundation for future emotional development, including whether children view themselves as loveable, trust other people, and are capable of feeling empathy. Research has also provided clues as to what factors determine whether a child will develop a “secure” vs. “insecure” attachment with a parent. Specifically, we now know that the most important ingredients are sensitivity and responsiveness on the part of the parent—in other words, the ability to read the baby well (know what he or she needs) and the willingness to meet those needs in a timely fashion. 

The bottom line of the attachment relationship, in other words, is very sensible:  Children fall in love with those who meet their physical needs for food and warmth, comfort them when they are hurt, protect them when they are frightened, and, in general, make them feel respected, understood, and loved. 

And here, obviously, is where the Baby Signs^® Program enters the picture.

• Because signs make the task of “reading” the preverbal baby so much easier, they help parents provide the baby what he or she needs to feel secure. 
• Second, parents who are intently watching for signs are automatically paying closer attention to whatever the baby does, thus increasing the chance that even non-sign signals will be detected. 
• Third, because they reveal to parents how much smarter their baby is than he or she looks (after all, babies do drool a lot!), signs convince parents that there’s truly “somebody home in there,”  somebody who is capable of feeling loved and secure or anxious and rejected.  That leads to the understanding that it really matters what a parent does.
• Finally, signs enable babies to share their worlds with their parents, thereby increasing the joy that each takes in the other’s company. 

For all these reasons, signing increases the probability of a secure attachment. That’s the formal way of saying (as we often do!) that the Baby Signs^® Program helps forge bonds of love and affection that can last a lifetime.

"Baby Minds" Webinars

Did you ever wonder what goes on in your young baby’s adorable little head? I’ve never met a parent who hasn’t! Well, no one can tell you precisely, but over the past few decades developmental psychologists have come up with a wide variety of clever techniques to open that window at least a little bit. And what they have discovered about early thinking skills is really fascinating.

Some years ago, Dr. Susan Goodwyn and I made this research the basis of a book for parents entitled Baby Minds: Brain Building Games Your Baby Will Love. And this week, I’m drawing from that book, in addition to more recent work, to present a webinar with a similar name: "Baby Minds: Nurturing the Seeds of Intellectual Development." This is a 2-part webinar. In the first part (Weds., October 16, 2013 at 6PM Pacific Time), you’ll learn about how babies are Involuntary Observers, Natural Born Mimics, and Little Scientists. In Part 2 (Weds., October 23, 2013 at 6PM Pacific time), I’ll round out this modern vision of the baby to talk about how babies are Pattern Predictors, Creative Communicators, and Motivated Memorizers. In each case, I’ll be sharing not just what we know, but also how parents and teachers can use this information to create easy activities to help nurture these seeds of cognitive development.

Hope you’ll join me for what I’m going to try my darnedest to make a fun and informative opportunity to learn more about your baby. For more information and/or to register, click here.

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

A Valentine’s Day Message

All of a sudden it’s February, and with February come thoughts of Valentine’s Day, the one day of the year totally devoted to “love.” What a broad term that is! The Greeks identified many, many different types of love – from the love we feel for our soul mates, to the love we feel for our friends, to the love we feel for a beautiful sunset or favorite poem. But when it comes to love, we feel sure you’ll agree that there’s no deeper or more important emotion than the love we feel for our children. One of my favorite quotations from writer Elizabeth Stone makes this point exquisitely. To have children, she says, is “to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” 

We know from our own experiences that parenting children is both the most rewarding and most challenging job you will ever face. More than any other life-change, the sudden responsibility of having to steer a helpless infant through the murky waters and ever-shifting currents of modern life can seem overwhelming. And with good reason. The world is a vastly different place from the one we knew as children ourselves. As we struggle to raise our children while also dealing with unimaginable technologies, economic and political uncertainty, changing moral attitudes, and growing cultural diversity, it’s only natural to make mistakes along the way.

Fortunately, children don’t expect or need perfection from us. Children, even during the infant and toddler years, are flexible creatures with a capacity to forgive – just as long as the scale, overall, is very clearly weighted in a positive direction. It’s as though Mother Nature has realized that not the richest parent, not the most educated parent, not the most well-meaning parent in the world, can be expected to do a perfect job. What children do expect from us is unwavering love and devotion – through both the good and the hard times, through both the terrible two’s and the terrible teens! And that’s what we need to remember this Valentine season.

As you pause to reflect on the love you feel for your own children, we know you will appreciate the profound wisdom contained in these words from Lloyd deMause with which I close:

“The evolution of culture is ultimately determined by the amount of love, understanding and freedom experienced by its children... Every abandonment, every betrayal, every hateful act towards children returns tenfold a few decades later upon the historical stage, while every empathic act that helps a child become what he or she wants to become, every expression of love toward children heals society and moves it in unexpected, wondrous new directions.”

Happy Valentine’s Day—and Happy Signing!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis
and
Co-Founder, The Baby Signs® Program

How Would You Feel If. . . .

Once again, I’m detouring from my usual discussion of signing with babies to some parenting advice drawn from my book with Dr. Susan Goodwyn entitled Baby Hearts: A Guide to Giving Your Child an Emotional Head Start.

“I’m so disappointed in you! Go to your room and think about what you did!”

These two sentences are hardly rare. Most parents probably have uttered them at one time or another. However, just because they are typical doesn’t mean they are a good idea! In addition to implying that love will be withdrawn, these messages leave out at least two very important pieces of information: (1) why what the child did wasn’t a good idea, and (2) what should have been done instead. The words succeed in making the child feel bad, but they don’t teach her how to be better in the future.

How would you feel if the same message was addressed to you? Suppose you had just gotten off the phone with a very disagreeable customer whose outrageous accusations caused your own temper to flare. Now suppose your boss, overhearing your end of the conversation, steps into your office and says, “I’m so disappointed in you. Go home and think about what you did.”

Can you see how unhelpful that is? You probably already know that you didn’t handle the situation well; what you don’t know is how you should have handled it: Called on your boss to take the call? Used some stock phrases to placate the customer? Claimed the call was breaking up and disconnected? Thanks to your boss’ choice of words, you still don’t know and may well find yourself in the same situation tomorrow. And to make matters words, you now feel humiliated as well as angry.

Well, guess what? Young children have the same reaction but with even less ability to think about alternative behaviors even if they wanted to! They need alternatives explained calmly and clearly. Keep this in mind the next time you are tempted to send this message—to anyone.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Happy Fathers' Day!

When I started seriously studying Child Development as a graduate student in 1969, the emphasis in the field was on the role that mothers play in fostering healthy development, and it had been that way every since Freud began in the early 1900s blaming them for everything wrong with children. This total focus on mothers finally began to change in the 1970s, as woman began to spread their wings and shout “Hey! We’re only one side of the parenting equation. It’s about time dads began stepping up to the plate too!”

As a result, the science began to change, in part by documenting the ways that dads contribute uniquely to the welfare of children. We learned that dads play in more “rough and tumble” ways than moms, that they tend to allow children to be more adventuresome, and that fathers teach boys about manhood and teach girls, in the best case scenarios, that the world can be their oyster, too. On the other hand, we also learned that “nurturing” can be done as much by dads as moms—and, thankfully, many of today’s modern dads take this lesson to heart.

That’s certainly true of the young dad in this photo—my step-son, Jim—who is holding one of his premature twin babies. You couldn’t ask for a more dedicated and “hands-on” dad, in the trenches every day.

The other fellow in the photo is the proud grandpa of the twins as well as my husband, Larry. While he may have started out as the more traditional, old-fashioned father, I’m pleased to say that he has met the challenge of expanding his vision of fatherhood and is enormously proud of the way Jim is “stepping up to the plate.”

Well before the birth of the twins, however, Larry had turned the corner. In every way he could think of, he did his darnedest to be there for Jim, not only instilling in his son compassion, courage, and integrity, but also providing him with whatever emotional support he could. As a result, the two of them have one of the closest, most emotionally rich and mutually satisfying father-son relationships I have ever seen.

So, on this Father’s Day, I want to say “Bravo” to two fathers who symbolize the best that fathers can be. Let’s hope both twins—Olivia as well as Nathan—grow up to understand that it’s love and sacrifice rather than gender that matters when it comes to raising healthy and happy children.

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, PhD.
Co-Founder, the Baby Signs® Program
and
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis

Infants are SO smart! See this video tip and you'll be amazed.

If you have an infant, you'll want to see this video! Dr. Linda Acredolo will show you a simple activity with a baby mobile will show you how smart infants are and how fast they learn.

Subscribe to these video tips.

Got a video camera? Use it to help boost your baby's memory skills!

Baby Minds Tip:
Boost your baby's memory skills - with your video camera
Watch this short video to learn how you can turn your video camera into a wonderful teaching tool for your baby. Child development expert Dr. Acredolo lets you in on this simple, but powerful, tip for building your baby's capacity for memory, a foundational skill for learning.

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Nurturing your child's Development
In this new online video series, Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr. Susan Goodwyn, child development experts and best-selling parenting authors provide you with useful tips, tools and insights about the three major aspects of development: language, cognitive and social-emotional development.

Subscribe to these video tips here.

7 Great Signs for the Holidays: LIGHT

Watch this video with your baby and learn the sign for LIGHT!

Visit us at www.babysigns.com

25 Days of Christmas: 25% off Birthday Book

Every day until December 25th, we'll be posting special Promo Codes for www.BabySigns.com. Get products for $25, save 25% or get $25 off.

December 4th: Get 25% off BeeBo's Big Birthday Surprise board book - regularly $9.99, with code just $7.49.
Today's Code: HAPPY25

Click here for more information - and a FREE Birthday Song download.

PS: Tomorrow's code is for 25% off EVERYTHING (one day only!)

7 Signs for the Holidays: #3 LOVE

Watch this video with your baby and learn the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for LOVE!
Click here to download a FREE signing poster!

Baby Signs Family Newsletter November 09

Baby Signs Family Newsletter, November 2009

How To Raise A Reader

Check out this great article from Parents.com featuring Dr. Linda Acredolo

By Kim Ratcliff

Settling into a comfy chair with your child to read a story is one of the best things about being a parent. And if you haven't already made reading a daily habit, you need to start now, since books benefit kids in so many ways. "First of all, reading with your child is a wonderful bonding experience," says Parents advisor Linda Acredolo, PhD, coauthor of Baby Minds. Your kid gets to bask in your undivided attention, which makes storytime truly magical. Reading every single day also helps your child learn to talk, expand her vocabulary, build her imagination, and get prepped for school. Our expert tips will get your child hooked on books for life.

Reading with Babies
You can't start the reading habit too early. At 3 to 6 months, your baby will be more interested in chewing her board books, but by the end of her first year, she'll probably pick out favorites.

What They Learn
When you turn pages with your baby in your arms, she'll associate books with snuggling. "As an infant, she's learning to value books because it means she gets to cuddle with her mom or dad," says Dr. Acredolo. But most important, reading to a young baby ultimately helps her learn to talk. She begins to connect pictures with words. At 9 months, she'll be able to home in on your tone of voice, cadence, and the length of sentences. "Parents help a baby learn language by speaking to her often, with varied vocabulary and about topics she finds interesting," says Parents advisor Kathleen McCartney, PhD, professor of early-childhood development at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Make Reading Fun

• Go for the right touch (and taste!). Babies learn through their senses, so buy cardboard or cloth books that they can put in their mouth.



• Face it. Infants love looking at pictures of faces, especially those of other babies.



• Be silly. Is there a phone in the story? Say, "Ring, ring. Hello? I'm sorry Olivia can't take your call; she's in a meeting."



• Point out things in the real world. When you're taking a walk, talk about stuff you've read about in books. "See the doggie?" This will help her begin to associate the word "dog" with her picture book and the live creature in front of her.

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• Go to original Parents.com article.
  
• Read about how signing impacts early literacy.


• See video of a baby signing and "reading!"
  
• Visit BabySigns.com

Contest! Win a V.Smile Baby™ Infant Development System from Baby Signs, Inc.

Win a V.Smile Baby™ Infant Development System for your baby!

V.Smile Baby provides fun and enriching ways for parents to interact and learn with their babies. Parents plug the console into the TV and insert their baby's favorite Smartridge™ (Learn & Discover Home Smartridge™ is included). Together, parent and baby play with the activity panel to interact with the delightful learning environments they see on the TV screen. With V.Smile Baby, you can share the joy and excitement of learning as you watch your baby grow.

V.Smile Baby Infant Development System teaches numbers, shapes, colors, animals and signs. Dr. Susan Goodwyn and Dr. Linda Acredolo, authors’ of Baby Signs: How To Talk With Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, have helped VTech provide a great start for signing with your baby.


How to Enter

MANDATORY ENTRY:
Visit the online store at BabySigns.com.
Post on this blog to tell us which product you would love to have.

EXTRA ENTRIES:
For additional entries, post a blog entry when you:

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• Tweet about this contest. You can tweet the following daily:
  Win a V.Smile Baby Infant Development System for your baby! Sponsored by Baby Signs, Inc. http://babysignsinc.blogspot.com
  

CONTEST RULES:
Due to shipping restrictions, this contest is only open to readers in the United States. Giveaway will end 8/31/2009 at 10:00 am PST. Winner will be chosen using http://www.random.org/. If winner does not respond within 5 business days, an alterate winner will be chosen. Please allow 10 business days for shipping. Baby Signs, Inc. reserves the right to revise the terms and conditions of this contest at any time.

Good luck to all entrants!

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Using Baby Signs to fight a global pandemic? What do you think of this?

This BBC news report surprised us!

What you think about using baby sign language in the fight against swine flu?
We'd love to hear your opionions.

Linda Easton
Director of Marketing,
Baby Signs, Inc.

GreenDaily.com on Green Potty Training

Ever wonder how potty training can be considered a "green" activity?
Read more at http://www.greendaily.com/2009/03/27/baby-signs-potty-training/.