13mo signs the same sign for everything

[me and bean]

bean can physically sign, 'eat,' 'milk,' 'more,' 'hello,' and 'head.'  but he uses 'eat' for everything, and i have to figure out what he wants.  granted it easier than having no communication at all.

if he wants more food, play, water - he will sign 'eat.'  i understand it.

if he needs to poo, he'll crawl up to me and sign 'eat.'  so right away i know he's trying to tell me something.  if it's not a meal time, i give him his snack cup and he drops it.  i offer a drink, but he shakes his head.  so i put him on the toilet and voila!

does anybody's elses lo do this?  or do you remember if they did before they started using the right signs?

tia

[amheusser]

Rachel preferred "more" for a while, and still uses it as a catchall sometimes.  I remember being so excited when she learned "yes" so my guessing game could actually succeed!  Now she does quite a few, but "please" seems to be overworked lately - very polite, but doesn't help when I don't know what she's asking for....    I'm not sure how the progression/timing worked, though I know I said "more what?" very often, to try to figure out what she really wanted.  When I did figure it out, I'd say & sign that word a couple times to remind her.

[deb]

With Natalie, everything is either "snake" (there's one in a tank behind her where she eats - YES, we have a pet snake in the house! , "airplane" (we get a lot of them flying overhead), or noises till I figure out what she really wants. She did sign "more" for a while, and once in a while will condescend to let us know that THAT is why she's making all that noise. Right now if she sees the snake, she signs that; if she hears an airplane, a train, a car, a helicopter, a motorcycle, or a lawn mower or other lawn care device, she signs "airplane." Oh yeah, and she signs "all done" and sort of says/sings it - sometimes it actually means she doesn't want any more of whatever she's eating/drinking/doing, while other times it means, "Hey, Mom, my mouth/table/dish is empty, put more in/on it already!" I sure hope she decides to either sign "eat" and "drink" or just say those words soon, 'cause I'm getting tired of the guessing games.

On an encouraging note, today we heard a train (we live fairly close to a busy freight/passenger line) and she signed "airplane" and I signed "train," and she sort of rubbed her fingers together in a similar way to my sign for "train," so maybe she's at the beginning of a sort of vocabulary spurt - without the spoken vocabulary!

[me and bean]

thank you both!  seems like a phase then. 

amazing how their little brains learn and can (try) show you what they need before they can speak it.

[GG]

DS has shown me that he knows how to sign eat, more, finished/no more, and milk. However, he won't use them!  He only uses eat when I ask him if he wants to eat and he's hungry - before that he just acts grumpy (as if he doesn't know that he is hungry). He won't use milk either (he did only once so I know he knows it) and he sometimes mixes up more and finished.  It's pretty frustrating but I know he'll eventually get there. *sigh*  I'm also starting to incorporate other signs for his interests but I know those will take a little while for him to learn.

[deb]

I think I've figured out Nat's signing issue: she uses signs only in response to things, so when she sees or hears something, she'll sign it, but coming up with a sign to tell me what she wants is another issue so far. It'll be nice when she makes the leap to telling me what she WANTS, not just what she and I can already see and hear!

[me and bean]

now he's signing 'water' for everything...

[GG]

*hehehe* one of these days he's going to shock you by "talking" to you with the appropriate signs all of a sudden.