A sign of the times

Liam is definitely getting to the point where he has ideas to communicate but limited options for getting his ideas across. In preparation for this time I have been showing him signs - based on American Sign language - for a couple of months. A few weeks ago he started using his first sign. It's an improvised sign for "ceiling fan." Since we have four of these in our house and he's always loved to watch them it was a natural.

He still hasn't started to use the signs that I think would be the most helpful like "drink" and "more." But yesterday he used a sign that we hadn't been trying to teach him. I asked him, "Are you tired?" Right away he put his hand up to his eye. I've tried this several times since then with consistent results. Actually, the words "tired" and "sleepy" seem to be interchangeable for this purpose.

Thinking about it, I realize that whenever Liam rubbed his eyes Allen or I would say, "Yes, you're tired. It's almost bedtime," or something along those lines. So we were reinforcing the sign without even realizing it.

Now you may be asking, "Isn't this just body language?" Well, it was just body language until Liam started consistently associating it with an English word. Now he can consciously use it to communicate. The motion becomes a symbol for tiredness. (OK, I'm in speech therapist mode here.)

I don't have a good picture of Liam signing yet, so here's a picture of a situation that doesn't really need language to get the meaning across. Well I think it's clear. Maybe we should have a "Write a caption for this picture" contest.