Originally Posted by Interpretrator

It's not easy. I have to do it in one of my classes where one student has a cochlear implant, another signs but is also oral, and another one has recently arrived in this country and barely knows any ASL. So I sign and speak everything and I end up repeating myself a bunch of times so that everyone understands. It ends up working out okay since it's an English class, but if I were teaching, say, history to deaf students, I'd probably go crazy.

Regarding "baby sign," the only thing that bugs me is why so they dumb down the signs so much for these programs? Someone once showed me a cheat sheet from their baby sign program and it seemed silly because okay, maybe a baby won't be physically capable of opening and closing a fist to make a clear sign for MILK. But hearing mothers know what their baby means when she says "muh," and deaf mothers know what their babies mean when they approximate the real signs until they are able to perform them correctly.

I am all for "baby sign" as long as that means "real ASL signs used with babies." Why even bother doing this if you aren't going to be using a real language? It would be like telling hearing mothers "Just teach your kid to say 'muh' because 'milk' is too hard."