When our son was born, my wife and I did a lot of research on various baby things - how to teach him to do things, how to teach him to communicate, how to get him to sleep, etc. We're geeks - so we read a lot of books!

My wife's cousin turned us on to baby sign language. Her cousin had bought a DVD that taught American Sign Language (ASL) for children, and his baby had picked it up very quickly. His baby wasn't deaf, and neither is our son. But babies can learn how to sign much more quickly than learning how to talk, without slowing down their vocal development. So we bought the DVDs and gave it a shot starting at 6 months.

By the time our son Theo had reached his first birthday - nothing. Six months of videos and no signs, so we kind of gave up on it. We occasionally showed him the DVD, but didn't push it like we had. Then, at 14 months, there was a transformation. Within a week, Theo learned 5-6 signs and was using them! Inside of a month, while he could only say Mama or Dada, we was communicating with us with ease - asking for food, milk, water, and more.

Theo is now 18 months, and while he still knows only a few words, he knows more than 80 signs! It's amazing to see a toddler ask for a cracker, or a carrot, or some toast, or to go potty - without saying a word.

The upshot is that my wife and I have also learned quite a bit of sign language, although amazingly, our son picks it up more quickly than we do!

Why is this on a technology site? Because almost all of the signs we have learned have come from a single resource:

Michigan State University's online ASL Browser!

This truly remarkable website has quicktime videos of hundreds of vocabulary words. It loads very fast, and each word is accompanied by an explanation. If you are learning sign language, we highly recommend using it as a resource.

If you are wondering what DVD we used to teach our child, it was the Signing Time series of videos. It can be bought from any major online DVD store.