Coming in on this conversation late . . .
Definitely get hearing checked out, but a couple of reassurances are 1) I recall reading in multiple places that children who learn two languages tend to reach verbal milestones slightly later for a while. Later, they end up having stronger verbal skills than their monolingual peers, but in the beginning they start out more slowly. ASL is a second language. Sounds to me like your daughter has quite good language acquisition in one of her two languages (150 words at 15 months is waaay ahead of the curve), which suggests the brain is working just fine.
2) Case in point: A friend of mine taught her daughter signs as a baby, and she picked up lots of them -- and didn't speak much till quite late. Her mother believes she *understood* English but simply had no reason to use it because she could communicate so well in ASL.
Hope you'll let us know how it works out!
Jenny
Thanks..
#2 is quite reassuring, actually, because experts all over the place swear up and down teaching your baby ASL will not delay speech. And for a baby learning a dozen signs, it may not. But I remember reading that bilingual thing, too, and I do think gaining a huge vocab in ASL could delay it.
She seems to gain a few new signs every day if she watches one of the DVDs... I'm wondering if I should lay off the DVDs, but that seems kind of silly, like keeping books from a kid so she doesn't learn to read.
Problem is she has so many signs now that *I* am starting to have no idea what she is talking about half the time. A lot of the signs are similar and she'll spot something across the room or in a picture and I can't figure out what she is trying to tell me. But maybe that will encourage her to start speaking more... ha.
I'll update after the test in the few days if there is anything.
