Hi everyone,

This is my first official blog on baby signing and speech! I am not used to blogging but I do feel that at least this is a good platform to share with everyone the progress I am making with Baby Signs program at Urbane Ethos Language Enrichment and Stimulation Center in Shah Alam, Selangor. I do look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Although babies only begin 1 word speech generally at the age of 12 month, cognitive and speech stimulation needs to be done during the initial 1 year period. One of the best ways to encourage cognitive and speech development of the babies would be to follow the BabySignsMalaysia program at www.babysignsmalaysia.com. In this program, infants and parents are taught in a playgroup using songs and repeated basic gestures associated with it.

Parents will then be taught how to apply these gestures with speech stimulus at home during daily interactions with child. This is great as new and even old parents, we are unequipped in our understanding of how to stimulate our child's speech! Yes, our babies need our time but how do we engage our child. What do we do? I do understand your frustrations. But not knowing is not a good excuse if we want what is best for our child. Therefore, it is important that parents learn the development that a child needs to go through and how programs such as this can help them and their child along.

Do know that even though babies cannot vocalize their needs, their feelings and needs are very real. If they have a way to communicate their feelings and needs, it would lessen their frustrations. Less tantrums, less crying is wonderful and we can understand what they need. Providing a way for babies to do this and to initiate early communication between parents and baby will be a great stepping stone towards early speech and learning development of the child.

As I also work with babies, toddlers and children with special needs; I have started to apply baby signing with speech to some of our down syndrome babies and toddlers as they would start using their gestures to indicate what they want. It is easier than using picture cards as some of them are on the move a lot or are just not inclined to picture cards. It seems to be working alright since I have started to implement the baby signing practices for 2-3months now and as I also expect speech for them, the child will imitate the signing and the word associated with them.

With the new year 2010 arriving soon, I am sure we can embark together on this journey of stimulating the minds and language of our child early. I look forward to sharing with each and everyone of you.

NR