Wee Hands offers alternate way to ‘speak’ with toddlers

Photo/WES KELLER CRAWLING TO THE MUSIC? A tot crawls by Tamara Perreira as she demonstrates American Sign Language for kids in a musical moment at Orangeville library’s Alder Street Branch Monday. Tamara, who will be at the Grand Valley library next Monday at 10 a.m., has been teaching a program called WeeHands since last October. She has been using sign language for 12 years as a second language, and has taught it to her own two children. About a dozen mothers of young children were given a glimpse this week of how easy it might be to communicate effectively with the youngsters before the children can utter a word.

Tamara Perreira was demonstrating sign language at the Alder Street branch of Orangeville Library on Monday. Based on American Sign Language (ASL), the system is called simply “WeeHands.” Tamara will be demonstrating the system again at Grand Valley Library on Monday, Feb. 6, at 10 a.m.

In an interview, she said she began to use sign language herself in her early teens when she discovered ASL is recognized as a valid language. Now she uses sign language to communicate with her own two small children.

Without a non-verbal system of communication for children who have yet to speak, Tamara said life can be frustrating for both the child and the parents.

For example, a child might be in discomfort but unable to communicate that it’s hungry. Or the parent might know of the child’s hunger, but would go through “20 questions” to determine what the child would like to eat. Or the child might need a second diaper change within a short time, but the parent thinks that’s not the problem because the diaper has just been changed.

“Signing,” she says, would overcome the frustrations. And it has done so for Tamara and her children, she says.

According to the WeeHands organization, babies understand words long before they can say them.

They have a desire to communicate, and begin to do so with signs by about seven months when they begin to wave goodbye or raise they’re arms to be picked up.

Tamara, who began using sign language 12 years ago and has been teaching it since October 2005, says there’s no great distance between those communications and signing for an apple, or a drink of milk.

WeeHands, which has taught more than 1,500 Ontario families since 2001, has a musical signing program to be used for fun teaching.

The program begins with 150 ASL signs for ages four months to a year.

The program raises questions about language development. WeeHands says signing might actually accelerate verbal language development, and “research shows that babies who sign usually begin to speak sooner and develop larger vocabularies than non-signing ones.”

You can explore the program with Tamara at Grand Valley library on Monday, contact Tamara at tamara@ weehands .com, or go to her website at www.weehands. com.