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Elise Tate is a Mom on a Mission To Normalize Sign Language — Her View From Home
“Ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, yet 88 percent of those parents will never learn sign language.” Elise Tate, mommy influencer, creator of SignMeUp, and wife of NFL football player Golden Tate, gasped when I spouted out that fact. I could visibly see her demeanor change. Her mama sear side came out, “Umm . . . what?”
Elise and I were having a conversation over Zoom. She had contacted me to get my insight about sign language, particularly my experience with signing with my baby and toddler. She came into the discussion hoping to learn something new and share with me her experiences as well, but I don’t think she was expecting to be so rattled by that astonishing statistic.
Elise’s love of sign language started out of necessity when she was going through a stressful situation, and she needed to be able to communicate with her daughter quickly and efficiently. This love soon turned into her passion project. She wrote and helped design a starter sign language book called Sign Me Up.
Sign Me Up is a book designed for parents to teach their children sign language as young as 6 months old or even sooner. She has plans to publish a whole series of sign language books and posters as well.
