15 months old, week 1

Getting mother's attention

Juli would lean sideway to the left in her highchair to get my attention whenever I became absorbed or daydreamed while preparing food.

Juli had learned that I was a visually-oriented person. Every time she or her head leaned sideway, I'd notice out of the corner of my eye and turned to gaze at her. She did this every time to get my attention.

A few weeks later (week 4), Juli tapped on my arm or leg to get attention. Sometimes she would pull the sleeve to get one's difficult attention. She stomped her foot to get one's attention from a short distance.

Understanding requests

Juli and I were in the family room. She picked up a plastic egg. I told Juli that the purple easter pail is in my office that she could pick it up. Juli toddled straight to the office and came back with the purple bag and big smile. She understood me.

Pointing at people

Dude turned on TV and booted up a PS3. As soon as the screen revealed a background picture of Juli and her mother myself. She excitedly pointed to the screen and pointed to herself, identifying herself in the photograph (background screen).

Then, Juli pointed at the screen and produced mother ("A" handshape). She turned her gaze at me who observed from the kitchen and pointed at me excitedly.

What followed was that she pointed at me and then herself repeating a few times as in "you and me". Throughout this session, she pointed with a straight arm, very clearly pointing.

At this stage, her pointing at people is very clear, unmistaken. But, it is a pre-linguistic gestural communication. I'm very curious about how it will transition into a linguistic pronominal symbol during the two-word stage of language development.

Use of ASL words

In the past Juli produced fish which was similar to the production of milk due to the non-distinct prime of movement, but the contexts and pointing were clear. Now Juli had acquired a more phonologically appropriate movement in fish which was close to the perfect production.

The following referential words that Juli has used this week: tired, building-blocks, store (grocery store), sun, and some reguarly used ASL words.

Two-word phrases in ASL

Dude exited. I explained to Juli in ASL, translated as Dad is gone for work. He drives to work. Juli thought for a moment and produced two words: work dad.

At one point (as seen in the video above) Juli produced a three-word utterance (work dad [other]); unfortunatley, I couldn't identify the last third production.

People

Got a story to tell your experience and share it with others? Send an email to Handspeak. I'd love to hear about it, too.

Saved from frustrations

"My 15 month old is using sign language very effectively. It has saved all of us much frustration. We use your site often for reference. .." -- Jennifer Keuvelaar, January 17, 2001.

"My 15-month old loves shoes. Anytime he sees them, he signs and says "shoes!" One day, we were talk about a pair of shoes and all of a sudden, he signed "pear" and "shoes" and was so proud of himself! Not quite the pair we were talking about, but I thought it was amazing that he had remembered a sign we had only shown him a few times before." -- Karen Buhler