A great article - thanks for writing it. I also found that basic sign language when my children were pre-verbal helped reduce their frustration considerably. I did also try to raise them bilingual, but we were in a two-family situation. What this meant was that all the limited cartoons we watched via the DVD player (no cable TV or terrestrial TV to pollute their minds!) at my place were all in French, and this worked perfectly until the day my daughter showed up on my doorstep just before her 4th birthday and glowered up at me reproachfully, then uttered the fateful words: "Mama has videos in ENGLISH!" After that, she refused point-blank to countenance anything in French and that was the end of her bilingual experience. Amusingly, she elected as a teen to change her prenom & surnom and adopt French words - yet she still can't speak or read or understand French. C'est la vie, on peut supposer...