Baby Signs and Dylan

Baby Signs has been a huge help for my little guy Dylan. Being a Baby Signs instructor and of course seeing all the benefits of infant sign language, I taught Dylan baby sign language. I never know however how much it would help until my little guy started showing a speech delay. This at first was confusing, usually infants who use sign language talk earlier than non signers. I couldn't figure out why my toddler was not progressing in his speech. At 20 months we decided to investigate his further as he was only saying mama and dada and should be saying at least 50 words. We had his hearing tested and turned out he had fluid in his middle ears and showed a conductive hearing loss. He was unable to speak because he could not hear correctly to learn speech. However because we had been using infant sign language, it has been a life saver for him to communicate with us, without it I don't know what we would have done. When Dylan was evaluated by a Speech Pathologist she said his comprehension ability was extremely good and was rare to see in a speech delay like his. She told me it was the sign language that developed such excellent comprehension skills! Dylan is now being seen by a ENT doctor and most likely fitted with PE tubes. He will then participate in speech therapy to get him back on track. We are so grateful we taught Dylan sign language and gave him an opportunity to be able to communicate with us and develop his comprehension. We never knew when we started how crucial it would be for our little guy!