15 month old using signs for everything.

[HopesMommy]

So my 15 month old, Hope, was signing help, more, and shoes correctly and suddenly she's signing shoes for everything and she just randomly signs help when she doesn't really want help with anything. Is this normal? Is it because she wants to know the signs to more objects? Anyone else experienced this? (I can't wait until she gets BST for Christmas!)

[Antonia]

My daughter uses signs (and words) with a very other meaning for some thingsm, too.

I don't know if there's a relation between for example "bath" and "fireworker" or if she just imagine a new sign for fireworker, because she don't know the real sign or if it's something else.

I use to look up the right sign and say something like "BATH? Do you think the FIREWORKER is DIRTY? Does he need a BATH?" and sign it.

Very strange is the nurse-issue. She is saying "more" and signing MILK. Even so she knows hte sign for more and that you can have more of everything, she'll say more for milk...

Antonia

[andrealynnj]

So my 15 month old, Hope, was signing help, more, and shoes correctly and suddenly she's signing shoes for everything and she just randomly signs help when she doesn't really want help with anything. Is this normal? Is it because she wants to know the signs to more objects? Anyone else experienced this? (I can't wait until she gets BST for Christmas!)

When Imani was a year and a half, she would sometimes get delighted with a particular sign and she would both sign it alot SHOES whenever she saw them, but also at other times when shoes were not a natural part of the conversation, e.g. Me: WANT MORE MILK? Imani: SHOES! Me: BATH WANT? Imani: SHOES! Me: SEE CAT! Imani: SHOES! Then a few weeks later, some new sign might be more interesting. But throughout she would occasionally use most signs approprately.

Now at 21 mo. she is much more mature in her language and I know if she is signing something for which the context is not immediately apparent, there is something I am not yet seeing that she sees, something that she heard that I have not paid attention to, or she is telling me about a dream or memory.

[dmmetler]

Alli does this with speech, too-she'll get a new word, and then everything is a cat, or a bear. I guess it's just a normal speech development thing. She's done that with signs, too. Everything was MILK for awhile there.

It's especially annoying when she starts using a spoken word in a global sense for things I KNOW she can sign. If she signs MILK, I know she wants MILK. If she says "ba", she might want a bear, a ball, a book, her wearable blanket (which daddy calls a bag), a block, or a bottle-and she's used it for all of those.

[earthdaymommy]

Katrina did this too, it was with the sign for cookie. She always used it as her sign for food or eat, even though she knew them. I would go over it, Me:katrina wants food, eat? cookie back...finallly she just stopped, now our big one is Drink...

[Teresa Jo]

... suddenly she's signing shoes for everything ...

Daniel does this from time to time. Just recently he was signing "more" for a lot of things. I think in that case he was using it to mean "want". Today it was "please" for everything!

[amiller]

I think there is such a thing as "sign babble" - you know, like calling everything "truck" when they know the word for it. I'd say it's a normal part of language development!

[aligreat]

Alexandria signs "Toothbrush" alot, but then again she does want one alot too. Some words are fun to say or to sign. (Or type--like bananas, for example.) Alexandria often signs "Shoes" seemingly out of context, but then again she loves shoes and might just want to play with some.

She also says "up" for both up and down, like when she is squirming trying to get down out of my arms she says "up, up." She also says "no" and shakes her head when she means yes, but her no that means yes is done in a different tone of voice with a different facial expression. :rolleyes: If our kids made life too easy, it wouldn't be as interesting.