Samantha Pstross

My name is Samantha and I started using sign language with my daughter, Izzy, when she was about 10 months old. At the time I was living in Prague, Czech Republic and had heard about baby sign language, but was a little unsure about it. A friend lent me a signing video and my daughter loved it. One day after I picked Izzy up from my mother-in-law’s she started rubbing her hands on her belly back and forth and I could see in her eyes that she was trying to tell me something. Finally, I figured out that she was doing the sign for bath! My mother-in-law had given her a bath while she was there and Izzy had really enjoyed - she was trying to tell me about it. After that, Izzy did the sign for bath every time we visited my mother-in-law and soon began doing more signs.

We now live in Arizona, where I have been teaching Political Science and Sociology at DeVry University. I also teach English as a Second Language and have had the privilege of teaching students of all ages for about 7 years now. I love teaching and helping people be able to communicate.  I find the world of language from music to art to be so diverse and fascinating!

Sign language has helped my family and I tremendously. We are raising Izzy bilingual (Czech/English) and signing helps her sort out the two languages, since we use the same sign for both Czech & English. It also helps my daughter to experience the world more physically by using her body to communicate. She loves signing and even though she can now speak and quite frankly is a little chatter box, she still signs all the time – often simply to emphasis her point (Okay honey, I get that you want ‘more’ ‘ice cream’… we all do). I think that sign language is incredible and I want to help other parents and children be able to communicate more easily with each other, because whether your child is trying to tell you that he is hungry or that she simply had a ball taking a bath at grandma’s, getting to know the little people in our lives is an amazing gift and adventurous journey.