Friday, July 11, 2008

Teaching Baby Manners

Annabelle has been hitting me on occasion. I think one time she wacked me and I said Ow! and she has been doing it ever since. I think she thinks its funny. She'll come up to me and whack me and then say, "Ow!" Or she picked it up at daycare. I tell her to tell me she is sorry and she will sign sorry! I say you hurt mommy and you have to say your sorry so hopefully she is getting the message. I also tell her that we say we love each other with hugs and kisses.
She also signs Thank you. She has done it when I say, "thank you" or when I prompt her to say it to someone else but now lately she has been doing it appropriately. I gave her her teether the other night and she signed Thank you! Then the other morning I took her to the library for a storytime and she was playing with a little boy. The little boy handed her a puppet and she signed Thank you to him! Such a polite young lady! Except for the hitting!

Help, Hurt and Medicine

Annabelle is teething. She got two new teeth last week and is working on some more. We have been showing her the sign for medicine for awhile but there have been thankfully few opportunities to show her this sign. While she has been teething she has been signing medicine more regulary. Sometimes she just wants us to know that she sees the medicine sitting there. She started doing this one day when she was really fussing and I knew something was wrong. I knew she was trying to tell me something but just couldn't communicate it to me. Crying, she pointed upstairs so I took her upstairs then she pointed to her nursery. I took her into her room and I tried to give her her blanket thinking she wanted that for comfort. I got a big "NO!" with a shake of her head. I told her that I knew she wanted something and when we found it I would teach her the sign so next time she would have it. She then pointed to her dresser where here tylenol and orajel were. I said, "Oh, you want medicine!" I showed her the sign and she did it back to me. I show her the sign for hur to and said, "Your mouth hurts you want medicine." I gave her the tylenol and a little bit of orajel and she was much much happier.
Annabelle also got confused the other day when I showed her a picture of a family friend's daughter, Madison. I said, "there is baby Madison" and Annabelle signed medicine. I guess Madison sounds a lot like medicine!
It wasn't until this week that I saw her sign hurt. She pointed to her mouth on our way to drop her off at daycare and then signed medicine. She did this a couple of times so I knew she was trying to tell me her mouth hurt and she wanted medicine. Unfortunately I had none in the car. She made it through the day okay though.
Help has also become a wonderful sign for Annabelle. Everytime she was trying to do something and was having trouble with it I would sign Help to here and say, "do you want me to help you?" Now she does it all the time and she says the word. Which is the whole point of signing right? Sometimes she signs Help when she is trying to do something I don't want her doing. Like I'm going to help her climb up onto a high part in the house or close the bathroom door on me!
Happy Signing!