Mischievous Martha

Yeah, some more Martha...

Martha's struggling a bit with Nursery. There are 2 1/2 kids in Nursery - Martha, C4 (as he is called affectionately, because he's the 4th boy in his family, all with "C" names) and Jane. Jane's not technically old enough to be in Nursery yet, but Clorinda loves her and knows it makes it a lot easier for me to teach singing time, so she usually grabs her for the last half of Nursery and feeds her snacks to win her love :)

I don't know if Martha is jealous or what, but she's been a bit of a snot the last few weeks in Nursery. But ain't it the truth, whenever a 3 year old is being a snot, there's a grown-up trying really hard not to laugh at them! Here's the story from this week:

Yay! It's snack time! C4 comes and sits down, Jane waddles over to the table, and Martha just sits on the floor, smiling and not moving. Ok, fine, you don't have to eat if you don't want to. So Clorinda turns to help Jane, and when she turns around, Martha has moved. To be precise, she is wrapped around C4 in a way I recognize, even though I wasn't there, because she does it to Jane sometimes, too. I call it the "unfriendly bear hug". Clorinda runs over and rescues C4, who cries and signs, "I don't like her!" But Martha smiles and (as far as the teacher could understand - toddlers speak a special dialect in ASL, too!) signs, "I feel good!"

Seriously. And I am very impressed at Clorinda for staying serious and teaching Martha to be nice instead of laughing her head off at the weird things toddlers say.

Sometimes, when we're doing sign language dinners, Martha will talk to us and we'll sign back, "I'm deaf today, I can't understand you. You have to sign!" I think this has confused Martha a bit...

A little later in Nursery, Martha was talking to Clorinda, who signed, "I can't hear you, I'm deaf! You have to sign!" Martha ignored her and kept on talking. Clorinda insisted. Finally, Martha rolled her eyes and signed, "FINE! Can I have some water please?"

Honestly, I'm not even sure Martha gets what deaf means. To her, it's the equivalent of someone who wants her to use sign language. But so many of the people she signs with can hear her, or they read her lips enough to figure out what she wants, that I think she really doesn't think ASL is all THAT important. She just signs to humor everyone.

ASL is tricky for hearing kids. I think deep down inside, whenever they're signing, they're thinking that life would be a lot easier if they could just talk instead. I think most of the kids in Primary have little rebellions against signing. They sit backward on their chair so they can't see anything. They talk continuously while the teacher is signing. They tell their mom they don't want to go to Primary. I think it's just because they don't want to have to pay attention that hard for 2 more hours. Maybe I'm observing all wrong. But regardless, it's nice to know it's not just my kid :)