Whew, we're flirting with the edge of the topic now, I know.   But not off
it, I think -- especially when we think about nursing toddlers there are a
lot of kids who need (and manage nicely thank you) to communicate a need for
something they can't yet say.

My .02:   My younger daughter, who at going-on-three now has beautiful
*language* but still has somewhat delayed and inarticulate *speech*, finally
persuaded her pediatrician to refer me for a speech evaluation (glad to
expand on that privately if anybody is interested!) by beginning, at 20
months with maybe half a dozen broken syllables in her whole productive
spoken vocabulary, to create her own signs -- not ones she had seen anywhere,
but clear and consistent ones that she made up herself.

In her case it was clear that she thought of this strategy because she was
sure that her parents (and some other people in her life) really did want to
know what she thought, and that we would knock ourselves out paying attention
to her to figure that out.   Note they were her own creations -- no "right"
or "wrong" in what sign she chose, etc.   For her they provided a tremendous
relief until she could form enough words to begin to be understood at least
by her near and dear ones (around 2) at which time she unceremoniously dumped
them, job done.

Elisheva Urbas
NYC

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html