When Sara Nelson Cosmi made this post on our Facebook page, she grabbed our attention!

I just wanted to share a quick story. My husband is a firefighter/EMT and went on a call last night to a house with hearing impaired patients. He was able to communicate with them, asking them “where does it hurt” and spelling out simple words all from watching Baby Signing Time with our daughter. It’s really neat to know that not only is Signing Time teaching our children but we gain from it as well. It encourages us to keep learning ASL and hopefully our children will continue to learn it as a second language. Thank You!

• Tell us about your family. How did you get started with signing?
  Jeff and I married about 5 and 1/2 years ago and moved from Portland, OR to a little town just North called La Center. We both actually work in Longview, WA, Jeff as a firefighter and I am a letter carrier with the USPS. When we were pregnant with our daughter we were already talking about trying to teach her some basic signs.  Neither Jeff or I knew any signs, I think I remembered part of the alphabet from when I was in elementary school but that was all we knew. We had heard that signing really helped communication and that Lily would benefit from it in so many ways. So we bought a basic sign with your baby book. After Lillian was born a couple people had told us about baby signing time, so we bought the first volume to try it out. Lily loved watching baby signing time, she quickly learned a few signs and we bought volumes 2 and 3. By a year and a half Lily was a signing machine (we aren’t biased or anything).  Me and Jeff were learning a lot too, it was really cool, we knew animals and foods and colors! Lillian is now 2 1/2 and has a baby brother, Baker, who we are turning onto the DVDs. Lily sings the songs to him and is a big help in trying to teach him.
• So what happened when your husband went out on the call you posted about?
  A drunk driver had crashed into the side of someone’s house in the middle of the night and landed in a gentleman’s bedroom. The man, his wife and their daughter were all hearing impaired. When Jeff arrived on scene he found out that the family was deaf and asked the man, in sign language, “Where does it hurt?” The man promptly showed him and after they got him stable, Jeff asked, “Where is your I.D?” by signing ‘where’ and then spelling out I.D. The family was able to communicate really well, Jeff said that they were able to read lips fairly well and that they had paper and pens to write stuff out, too. The paramedics came and took over with the gentleman (he was the one in the bed when the car came through the wall) and Jeff tried talking with the wife a bit. She asked him to tell her husband to call on his phone when he got to the hospital and Jeff was able to do so.
• What was your husband’s reaction to this?
  Jeff doesn’t really feel like he did anything special. He was able to make some people feel more comfortable because he was able to communicate, however small it may have been, with them at a difficult time and it was all from watching Baby Signing Time with our daughter. Jeff never thought that he would need to use signing on the job but was excited to be able to and is ready to learn more.
• How else has signing impacted your family?
  It is really neat to us to be at a gathering or a restaurant and be able to communicate across the room. Or for us to look across the playground and tell Lily to ‘share with her friend’ or ask her to say please. Signing is an awesome way to communicate and we are anxious to learn more. Thank you for helping our family open our eyes to another world..signing!

1. Baby Signing Time Full Collection
2. All of the Signing Time Products!
3. Baby Signing Time, Vol. 1
   
4. Potty Time
5. Series 1, Vol. 7: Leah’s Farm
6. Series 1 Full Collection
7. Signing Time Board Books
8. Series 2, Vol. 2: Happy Birthday to You
9. Classroom Edition
10. Flash Cards

I love giving Baby Signing Time as a baby gift. It introduces them to the whole line of great products! – Chana Posen

I love to give Signing Time to moms in public!! When people see my daughter sign and are amazed, I tell them all about Signing Time as if I were a door to door salesman!! We keep some Signing Time DVDs in the car for long trips and I have left them as tips at restaurants, and given them away at grocery stores!! My most recent gifting was to a woman that I met at the grocery store. Both she and her husband are deaf, but have a son who hears. She had never heard of Signing Time, and she is having trouble getting her son to sign. I gave her all of our Baby Signing Time DVDs (My daughter has outgrown them.) And he is beginning to sign! It brings tears to my eyes when I hear of a child learning to sign, It’s like an angel who has gotten their wings!!! – Katie Ralston-Litmer

Leah’s Farm is the hit in our house! The music, along with the signs are just perfect for our little one. She loves Rachel! Our daughter really thinks she will meet her and loves to call her on the Potty Time app. If you don’t have Potty Time, it’s awesome! I suggest a bundle of Everyday Signs, Leah’s Farm and Potty Time. – Jennifer Pedersen

I would love to give Baby Signing Time to everyone! I’m a mom to a child with unilateral hearing loss and speech delay and Baby Signing Time and Signing Time (and now Potty Time!) have made a huge difference in my daughter’s ability to communicate, both in ASL and expressive speech. I think it would be awesome if states sent every new baby a copy of Baby Signing Time, whether they are born in a hospital, birthing center, or at home. Baby carriers and Baby Signing Time are my favorite gifts to give new parents! – Jennifer Pummell Hamner

Learning ASL through watching Signing Time Series One with my daughter has helped me to communicate better with her and her cousins. They are all toddlers. It is much easier to understand their speech when they sign while talking. The videos in Series One have also really helped increase my daughter and nephew’s vocabulary. – Julia Pitt

There is no one product that is best, just the noise I heard from my autistic son at age 5 when he said his first words when watching Signing Time. – John-Erica Belcher

I would love to give the Signing Time Classroom Edition to Primrose Elementary School in Shelburne, Ont. The kindergarten teacher is learning and teaching both her classes signs so they can communicate with their deaf classmate. – Marla Kozak

This post is by Joanna Smith of Surprise, AZ and is part of our Making a Difference series.

My family and I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game the other weekend in Phoenix.  At the end of the game we went down to meet the players.  I saw a mom and her approx. 8 year old boy signing to each other (way faster than I could even understand).  It appeared that they were both deaf.  I pointed them out to my 12 year old daughter (who learned to sign from Signing Time over the past four years).   I told her to go sign to him.  She was immediately nervous, but when I pointed out that she knew how to sign, “Did you like the basketball game?”, she wanted to try it out. She approached him and got his attention from a little ways away.

She signed to him,  “Did you like the basketball game?”
He looked completely shocked and signed back, “Yes.”
“Me too!” she replied.

The mom saw him sign to someone else and turned around to see who it was.  I smiled and waved at her and we left.   My daughter and I were so excited from this experience.  She had just had a conversation (brief as it was) with a stranger in a foreign language.  He probably didn’t even know about Signing Time.  It was a great witness to me that what I have been teaching my children for the past four years is a REAL LANGUAGE!!!

Due to our experience with Signing Time, an opportunity was created for my daughter to “talk” with someone with her hands.  It was AWESOME!!  There is a deaf lady that works as Target in our town.  I want to take all of my kids there to practice their signing with her.  I bet she would love it.

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Joanna received a $25 Signing Time Gift Card for sharing her story.
Submit your Making A Difference story!

Making a Difference

Many of you are using Signing Time products to improve the quality of life for children and families in your community. We LOVE hearing about all the amazing volunteer work and community service projects you are doing to “pay it forward!” You inspired us to create a monthly blog post called “Making a Difference” so we can share your stories with other signing families.

Send us your story about your community project! If it is chosen for the blog, you’ll receive a $25 gift card* to be used at www.signingtime.com.

How to submit your story

1.   Take photos of your community service event or project in action

2.   Attach the photos to an email addressed to makingadifference@signingtime.com

3.   Describe your project in the body of the email.

4.   Add your name, address and phone number – and hit send!

*Signing Time Academy Instructors are encouraged to submit their stories, but are not eligible for the gift card.

Earlier this month, we introduced the new Down Syndrome Daily Support Bundle and shared our new 10-page guide “Using Signing Time with Children who have Down Syndrome” (click on Details tab to download).  Since that time, we’ve been receiving emails from parents of children with Down syndrome who have told us about the impact Signing Time has had on their child’s life. We felt so inspired by these moms’ stories that we just had to share them with you, with their permission, of course! We hope these heartwarming stories bring a smile to your faces, just as it did to ours.

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Dear Signing Time,
I have a 4.9 year old son named Nathan who was born with Down syndrome. Since Nathan was 4 months old, he has been around the “average” child at my preschool, where I worked as a teacher. He has learned all of the typical preschooler things and I was indeed a very proud mother. However, I did notice one flaw: Nathan couldn’t verbally express himself and this caused him to show little interest in playing games and such with the other children. As time went on, Nathan had begun lessons with his speech therapist twice a week, but he would get so frustrated when she tried to get him to enunciate words when role playing, Nathan didn’t want to take part. In fact, Nathan showed no interest at all, and his tantrums worsened over time.

Months slowly passed by, and I realized that after 14 years of teaching preschoolers, that my time was over, and starting a new path would really be best for my son. It became very important for me to help my son overcome his stress of not being able to fully communicate his wants and needs. So after a long journey of teaching, I decided to resign as a preschool teacher, and home-school my only child. (My heart skipped a beat, just going back to that time. But thankfully I made the right decision).

When our official school days began in August of 2009, I tried teaching him the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes and manners, but he would only be interested if I sang educational songs. Nathan did not care to do learning sheets, or hold a crayon, or paintbrush; these things didn’t interest him any. He enjoyed finger-play, music, loud and fun games. I became frustrated because teaching with songs, worksheets, crayons, paints, etc., was all I ever knew how to do. So I did what any woman of faith would, I prayed and with tears, I closed my eyes and asked God how can I help my son speak. And miraculously I heard God clearly say “Teach him sign language”. Then a huge feeling of peace came over me. I knew, in my heart that ASL would be a great way to help my son.

I went online and found some sign language videos. One of them showed a woman with a bright yellow shirt who was singing either the “Pizza Song” or “Colors of the Rainbow”, and my son ran to the kitchen to see what the loud noise was. My son stared closely at Rachel and loved her. He sat through the whole video and after he looked at me and signed “more” (his DT showed him more in ASL when he was a year old). So I found more videos of Signing Time and he stared at the computer longer than before. My son was happy and loved Rachel. This was a progress!

After doing some background research on Rachel and read how the family learned of Leah’s deafness at around 18 months, I felt a connection with Rachel. My son could not hear at birth and even failed his first hearing test at a few months old. The doctors had to surgically install tubes in his ears to reduce leakage backup. This was quite a scary time for us…he was under anesthesia and also had a 0.5 cyst removed from his uvula at only 8 months old. So, I felt like I could relate to Rachel and trust that she has the best interest for kids in mind.

We bought our first video “Sing and Sign”, and it was a family hit. Nathan just kept on smiling and dancing. He was a happy little boy, one who was more focused, sitting longer and ready for more songs and signs using his hands. I had the best feeling in the world of success. And, of course, I began purchasing Signing Time books, flashcards, posters and more videos. My son can sign about every word he has sees on them!  I am so excited and look forward to hearing my son speak and as well sign his feelings in complete sentences.

Here are some video clips of Nathan to show you how signing is working for him:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cindyann118#p/u/2/5YreGsJLvgo (my favorite!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVvHWIxl9c
http://www.youtube.com/user/cindyann118#p/u/1/DYPQR-B5kkg

How awesome, awesome and, (did I say awesome?) this line of products was for my son. Thank you Rachel, Leah, Alex and Team for taking the time out to care for not only your family, but ours. God bless you all!

Cindy Koll-Martinez
Jersey City, NJ

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Dear Signing Time,

My son, Sam, is currently 5. We started using Signing Time when he was a baby. He did not show interest until he was around a year old. One day we were sitting at his sisters Gymnastics class, waiting and he became restless. I asked him what he wanted and he babbled to me. I asked again, he signed and said “cracker”. This was the first time he put together the concept of signing to communicate!

He took off learning signs, could not get enough. He is now very verbal and remembers most of his signs.

I also credit Signing Time with helping Sam learn to read. I think that connecting the concept of knowing that signs mean words, helped him connect the concept of letters and written words, too. I hope that made sense. Sam still asks to watch Signing Time on a regular basis. His favorites are ABC Signs and all episodes talking about animals.

Barbara Rizk
Tigard, Oregon

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Dear Signing Time,

Our son, Ian, has Down syndrome and is 33 months old. Ian has been watching Signing Time since 6 months old. He signs everything and absolutely loves every video, every song, Rachel, Leah, Alex, Hopkins, everything about Signing Time. He asks for ‘Signing Time’, sings the songs, and smiles the most beautiful smile every time.

He learned all zoo animals, farm animals, family members, foods, ABCs, bugs, colors, manners, SO, SO MUCH from watching Signing Time. As a family we had Signing Time songs and videos as one of our main ‘healing tools’ in the beginning. The inspiring example of Rachel and her family of how to face and serve through the experience of leaving with disabilities was just a blessing for our lives as parents.

Today Ian is starting to speak, and he is doing wonderful. Slowly he is fading the use of signs to communicate but the Signing Time videos are still very important for firming up and teaching new vocabulary. Instead of watching TV he watches Signing Time (and other communication oriented videos such as reading, etc). We just bought ‘Welcome to School’ and ‘Nice to Meet You’ videos and we plan to buy more Signing Time videos now that he is starting preschool.

It feels like Rachel and her family are part of our family. We love the whole Signing Time family…and we feel loved by them. Yesterday we went to the MDSC Buddy Walk in Wakefield, MA, and met Rachel in person for the first time. We chatted for a couple of minutes, gave a big hug, and took a picture. We were so thrilled, and she was exactly like we thought she would be: natural, simple, great.

Thank you so very much for this beautiful work.

Warmly,
Maria Thompson, Ph.D.
Beverly, MA