Baby Sign Language- When to start?

My daughter is going to be 11 months old next week and is doing fantastic with her baby signing. Recently she's been getting into that "monkey see, monkey do" stage and repeating every gesture. We started signing to her for simple things from day one. I already knew sign language because I have deaf individuals in my extended family, and I enjoy it and anything that can help her put a voice to her desires, wants and needs earlier is a blessing to me. Her most common sign is "More and Again" - I'll be tickling her for a few seconds and then stop and she'll sign more or again and I will. She uses about 6-10 different signs.

As soon as your baby shows recognition abilities. There is a book out called "Baby Signing for Dummies" and it is really good.

We've been going to a Tinytalk class since my baby was 4 months old. I started signing with 'milk' and then basic signs like bath, food, books, car etc. My baby is now nine months old and is definately understanding them now. If she's grizzly and I sign and say milk or bath she calms immediately. A lot of the older kids in the class are using lots of signs and their speech is really being helped. Apparently signing helps a baby communicate as they can learn to sign before they can talk and can help them not to become frustrated as they have a way of saying what they want. My baby also loves all the songs etc we do with the signing and it fills time!

we watched the movies from about 3 months up--- she's 18mths now and uses a few signs... I never really stuck with it, Im sure if you worked at it it would be nice... It pays off around 1 yr when they are really trying to talk but cant seem to enuciate.

My baby girl is 5 months old and started doing the sign for " more " when I'm feeding her . I started 2 weeks ago :)

when you start talking to the baby make the sign... food (then sign it) then take their hand and make the sign.

Start from birth and keep going if you are really serious about it. My sister kind of signs haphazardly to my one year old niece and then gets frustrated when the baby looks at her funny. It's something you have to be consistent with.

We started with "more" and "all done" when the kids started solids. We weren't terribly consistent with baby #1 or #2. My oldest started signing back right after her 1st birthday and went on to make up lots of her own "signs" for things. My 2nd daughter didn't care much for signing and quit using "more" and "all done" fairly quickly. We've been a lot more consistent with DS, and he *loves* to sign. He's 17 months old, and he can do more, all done, please, thank you, banana, milk, juice, apple, cheese, ice cream, water, eat, toilet, play, down, book, sleep, and help. He also has gestures for several different animals and a couple other things. He picks up any new signs quickly as long as we use them consistently for a couple days. A couple times, we've made up a sign for something if we can't find the real one, and that works, too. My son really liked the baby signing board books that we got at the library, and he'd have us read them over and over and show him the signs. It's so nice that he can communicate his needs to us before he can say the words. I've really been enjoying the signing this time around and definitely recommend it to new moms. Have fun!