Friday Feature: Signing Success Story | San Antonio * Baby Signing

In my quest to start being more active on the blog, I reached out to a few mamas and asked them to share their family's Signing Success Story. Here is McKaylee's story!

* Child’s name and age:

McKaylee (2) and Tyler (10)

* When and why did you start signing with your child?

McKaylee was born at 35 weeks and stayed in the NICU for a little over a month. She had been intubated and had a lot of feeding and breathing problems. It took her a little longer to start making sounds and a lot longer to actually start forming words. We started signing with her when she had just turned 1. We were having a lot of trouble understanding her. The doctor had already warned us that we may have to start speech therapy soon. We were not ready for that. I thought it was still a little to early to tell. But we needed to do something because it was very frustrating to everyone (her included) that we could not understand her. In fact, I think it made her crazier that we couldn't make out anything that she was "saying".

* How has signing made a difference in your family?

At first we just downloaded the free Signing Time sample and the kids LOVED it. She would sign almost everything on it and Tyler would help her with the ones she couldn't figure out. Her favorite was train, car and the colors of the rainbow. So we made the jump and bought the volume 1 bundle. It taught us how to say her favorite snacks like milk, water, and crackers. She likes to "read" the book to Tyler. It was like it opened up a new world for us. She started to sign a lot of the little words and we were able to communicate a little more with each other. A lot less tears all around. :)

* What would you tell a friend interested in signing with their child?

I would tell anyone who is thinking about signing with their child to DO it, regardless if your child speaks perfectly or not. I think it helps the child think about what they are trying to say before they say it. McKaylee has since started to talk a lot better and the Pediatrician has told us that she does NOT need speech and that whatever we were doing it was working, so we will keep on signing! Even though she does not sign as much now that she talks clearer and with longer sentences, she does sign things unexpectedly. To see her sign things out of the blue makes me happy! Makes me smile to know that when she was having a hard time trying to communicate, she had such a great program to help her along!

* Do you have a favorite Signing Time product?

So far our favorite Signing Time is all of them. We have rented a few from the Library. I think that as she gets older we just have new favorites. They grow with her. We are looking forward to starting the Potty Time videos with her.

Thank you for sharing, Lindsay! 

If any of you are interested in downloading the FREE Signing Time sample, click on the link above for directions. Lindsay will be sent a  free Practice Time DVD for participating in this series, but all opinions are her own. Other affiliate links are included in this post-see my Disclosure Page for more details.