Baby-signing: where you can learn to do it in the UAE

Babies learn to communicate with simple signs such as blowing kisses and waving goodbye when they are as young as six months, but taking that a step further and teaching them sign language can open up a whole new channel of communication even before they learn to speak – and leads to fewer tantrums.

So believes Abu Dhabi-based mum Silvia Sopkova, from Slovakia, who is hosting a baby-signing workshop, using American Sign Language, for parents at the capital’s Bodytree Studio this weekend. Sopkova says she enjoys regular “chats” with her toddler Marko, 2, just like she used to when her older son Matteo, who is now 4, was a baby.

Sopkova started learning sign language when she was pregnant with her first child. By the time Matteo was 1, on a family trip to Slovakia, Sopkova was able to engage him in conversation.

“Everybody in Slovakia has a dog in their backyard, so Matteo made the sign for dog, all the time, by petting his leg. We were working on colours, so, he could say: ‘It’s a small brown dog’. A child not empowered by signing would not be able to put a whole sentence together at that age,” says Sopkova, adding that signing also works as a handy secret language. “We’ll be in a room full of people and I don’t need to shout: ‘Do you need the toilet?’ I’ll just sign it.”

American mum Casey D’Entremont, 33, began signing to her daughter, Aria, now a year old, a few weeks after she was born. The D’Entremont family, who live in Abu Dhabi’s Mangrove Village, use ASL.

“Aria first learnt the sign for milk,” says D’Entremont, who started learning ASL as a child so she could communicate with her hearing-impaired cousin. “I had this moment of ‘she gets it, she’s been listening to me and she knows that I’m listening to her’.”

Original article by Jessica Hill

Continue reading at The National:

Baby-signing: where you can learn to do it in the UAE