We were at a birthday party yesterday when two Deaf parents were discussing how much to vocalize to their kids. Because it's true - kids learn fast to look away if they don't feel like seeing what you sign. So you can take the high road and insist that they look...or you can just talk to them, which alleviates a lot of fighting. This seemed to be the gist of the conversation - how much to fight that battle. (Though I came in late, so maybe I'm wrong...)
I jumped in. "Oh, we NEVER vocalize to our kids." Conversation stops. Jaws drop.
Uh, no - that was a complete and total joke. I was NOT serious about that!!
Phew. Conversation resumes
Yeah, we're pretty serious about learning ASL, but we're not actually crazy. Once, we did a voice-off day, where we didn't talk all day long. But that was only once. And it was fabulously educational. And I don't think it would be so hard to do again, because we're all way better at signing now than we were 15 months ago when we did it last. But I still really love yelling up the stairs to get my kids to come to dinner. You could say I'm sorta addicted to it.
Right now we have 2 things going on to help us learn ASL, besides going to church, which is fabulously educational all by itself :) First off, we're still trying to sign every night at dinner. When we're tired, we give up and talk. But we're really trying to make ourselves practice at dinner time still.
Our second project is to help us improve our receptive skills (understanding what someone signs to us.) We have a contest going on. Every day that you watch at least 5 minutes of ASL video, you get a star. After 2 months, the person with the most stars will win a fabulous prize that everyone wants enough to make them remember :) (It's a flashlight.) (But a cool one...) (Second place gets a USB fan to cool you while you surf.) Last time we did this (for a bag of jelly beans), we tried watching The Daily Moth every day. It's a news channel, which is great because they have a new video every day. But I'd forgotten how much of a downer the normal news is. Someone got killed, the coral reefs are dying and some Deaf people were put in prison unfairly. It was pretty depressing to show our kids every day. So right now, Mom and Dad are watching The Daily Moth or Sign1 News, but the kids are mostly watching Austin Andrews, who published a pretty fun vlog for several years. They haven't run out of his videos yet. The little kids are watching signed stories (like "Merry Christmas, Splat". I'm sorta tired of that one...) And sometimes something fabulous will show up on my FB feed that I'll pass on.
So that's where we are right now. We talk about taking a class or hiring a tutor some times. But life is busy. So we just try to spend a few minutes every day improving, and little by little, we're getting there.
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Martha praying
The Young Women sang/signed a song today in Sacrament meeting that was just beautiful. All the tear-prone women were teary. After Sacrament meeting, a branch visitor told me how he really wanted to pull out his phone and record the song, even though he knew that was really inappropriate. It was just that lovely!
I can totally commiserate. Every day when Martha says her prayers, I really want to whip out the camera! Even though I know it's totally inappropriate :) But I know she'd love seeing how she signed back when she was 3, and prayers are the only time she's signing without interruption! Ah, it's tough being a mom :)
When Martha prays, she makes a really hilarious face, like she's saying the letter F with a squint. And she holds that for the whole prayer. It comes from mouthing the word "for" - "thank thee for..." Then she's concentrating really hard after that, so she keeps the concentrate-y face. The result is that she looks like a really adorable squirrel while she prays.
Her other quirk right now is that she's either stuttering or else she's messed up with how many times you repeat an action for various signs. This is how a prayer might go: "Dear day (oh wait) Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you we-we-we can (whatever). Please bless Patricia Patricia can get better." It's always the object of the thanks/please bless that gets repeated. The other day she prayed in English, and she still said Patricia twice. Go figure. She also ended her prayer "with the name of Jesus Christ." I wonder how old she'll be before she adopts the typical English of "in the name..." instead.
She won't be this cute for much longer - even Sam, who's only 2 years older, has much more mature language, with fewer funny things...oh wait, as soon as I type that, I do remember that he signed "I want 2 (fingerspelled)b-e a .....whatever it was....the other day. I remember when we joined the branch, one of the kids signed "2 B" for "to be" and I about died laughing. Well, now my own kid has done it. There's no "to be" verb in ASL, so it messes with the kids a bit when they're trying to translate their thoughts from English. The little kids don't seem to have this problem, it seems to come up once they start reading. But still, nothing can be as cute as Martha's squinty squirrell face, so I'd better enjoy it while I can!
I can totally commiserate. Every day when Martha says her prayers, I really want to whip out the camera! Even though I know it's totally inappropriate :) But I know she'd love seeing how she signed back when she was 3, and prayers are the only time she's signing without interruption! Ah, it's tough being a mom :)
When Martha prays, she makes a really hilarious face, like she's saying the letter F with a squint. And she holds that for the whole prayer. It comes from mouthing the word "for" - "thank thee for..." Then she's concentrating really hard after that, so she keeps the concentrate-y face. The result is that she looks like a really adorable squirrel while she prays.
Her other quirk right now is that she's either stuttering or else she's messed up with how many times you repeat an action for various signs. This is how a prayer might go: "Dear day (oh wait) Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you we-we-we can (whatever). Please bless Patricia Patricia can get better." It's always the object of the thanks/please bless that gets repeated. The other day she prayed in English, and she still said Patricia twice. Go figure. She also ended her prayer "with the name of Jesus Christ." I wonder how old she'll be before she adopts the typical English of "in the name..." instead.
She won't be this cute for much longer - even Sam, who's only 2 years older, has much more mature language, with fewer funny things...oh wait, as soon as I type that, I do remember that he signed "I want 2 (fingerspelled)b-e a .....whatever it was....the other day. I remember when we joined the branch, one of the kids signed "2 B" for "to be" and I about died laughing. Well, now my own kid has done it. There's no "to be" verb in ASL, so it messes with the kids a bit when they're trying to translate their thoughts from English. The little kids don't seem to have this problem, it seems to come up once they start reading. But still, nothing can be as cute as Martha's squinty squirrell face, so I'd better enjoy it while I can!
Friday, February 15, 2019
More questions: did Jane know I wrote about her last night?
I think Jane must have known what I said about her yesterday. How else do you explain that she suddenly loves using her hands today?
At breakfast, she signed everything. She and Martha were watching a sign language story (It's their favorite story, Merry Christmas, Splat.) Jane signed with great excitement, "AGAIN!" Then Martha laughed, "Mom, the story isn't done yet!"
Jane wanted more smoothie, which we just use the sign for fruit. She pointed at the smoothie and signed...bathroom. Not making it up. The hand motion is sort of the same.... But hey, at least she was trying!
So, our prophecy that meals would still be a little funny after Jane started to sign was literally fulfilled, the very next day!
Our friend Michai was here, and Jane likes her a lot. Today she decided Michai should read her a story. She handed her, "Mr. Brown can moo, can you?" Seriously? But Michai was a good sport, and Jane loved it. I surreptitiously whipped out the tablet to record that yes, Jane can use her hands :) You can see her watching the book and Michai's hands. It's pretty cute, if you ask me (and I'm certainly not biased...)
At breakfast, she signed everything. She and Martha were watching a sign language story (It's their favorite story, Merry Christmas, Splat.) Jane signed with great excitement, "AGAIN!" Then Martha laughed, "Mom, the story isn't done yet!"
Jane wanted more smoothie, which we just use the sign for fruit. She pointed at the smoothie and signed...bathroom. Not making it up. The hand motion is sort of the same.... But hey, at least she was trying!
So, our prophecy that meals would still be a little funny after Jane started to sign was literally fulfilled, the very next day!
Our friend Michai was here, and Jane likes her a lot. Today she decided Michai should read her a story. She handed her, "Mr. Brown can moo, can you?" Seriously? But Michai was a good sport, and Jane loved it. I surreptitiously whipped out the tablet to record that yes, Jane can use her hands :) You can see her watching the book and Michai's hands. It's pretty cute, if you ask me (and I'm certainly not biased...)
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Why do kids whisper when you tell them to sign?
Jane is about 22 months old, and is starting to get interesting, language wise. She's my first child to grow up with enough exposure to sign language from birth for me to expect her to be able to use both languages well. And we all know how babies LOVE sign language, and can sign earlier than they can speak, blah blah blah....
Well, Jane is a verbal little girl. All my other kids were late talkers. Not Jane. She talks a LOT. When she was a year old, and I was signing "milk" like crazy to her, she just said it. It was kind of exasperating. This was going to be our little signing baby, dang it all!
I wonder if all that sign language helped develop her speech, actually...hmmm...
Anyway, at dinner, we usually do voices-off (unless we're all just really tired and can't bear the idea of having to think really hard). Except Jane, who talks along very happily. Ok, fine, Martha usually says what she wants to say, then Mom signs, "It's signing time..." and Martha signs it while whispering the same thing she just said. But at least she signs :)
Marriner and I have both felt like Jane could do better at learning to sign, and we're trying to encourage her to use her hands. This is what that looked like today:
While I was talking to Marriner, Jane wanted some attention, so she stuffed her sippy cup down her high chair, then shouts, "Mom! Milk!" I look at her (because even though my voice is off, it turns out I'm not actually deaf...) and sign, "What?" She says (again), "Mom! Milk!" Repeat this about 5 times. Finally, I sign, "It's signing time..." And I kid you not, Jane stops shouting and starts whispering.
Is she just copying her sister? Is there something inherent in hearing toddlers that they think signing is actually just talking really quietly?!?! Where does this come from? Don't they notice that their Deaf teachers still can't understand them when they whisper?!? Augh!!
So her milk is stuck in her high chair, and she doesn't want to sign. So I decide to help her. I sign,"help-me." Jane says out-loud, "Help me!" I sign, "Copy me: help-me" Jane says, "Help me!" Repeat about 5 times. Finally, I give in and talk. "Jane, sign help me." And she does. And then I help her.
Toddlers are weird.
Anyway, she understands what we sign to her, so I'm sure someday she'll decide to whip out those hands and use them. Until then, dinner will be a little funny. Come to think of it, it will probably be a little funny after then, too!
Well, Jane is a verbal little girl. All my other kids were late talkers. Not Jane. She talks a LOT. When she was a year old, and I was signing "milk" like crazy to her, she just said it. It was kind of exasperating. This was going to be our little signing baby, dang it all!
I wonder if all that sign language helped develop her speech, actually...hmmm...
Anyway, at dinner, we usually do voices-off (unless we're all just really tired and can't bear the idea of having to think really hard). Except Jane, who talks along very happily. Ok, fine, Martha usually says what she wants to say, then Mom signs, "It's signing time..." and Martha signs it while whispering the same thing she just said. But at least she signs :)
Marriner and I have both felt like Jane could do better at learning to sign, and we're trying to encourage her to use her hands. This is what that looked like today:
While I was talking to Marriner, Jane wanted some attention, so she stuffed her sippy cup down her high chair, then shouts, "Mom! Milk!" I look at her (because even though my voice is off, it turns out I'm not actually deaf...) and sign, "What?" She says (again), "Mom! Milk!" Repeat this about 5 times. Finally, I sign, "It's signing time..." And I kid you not, Jane stops shouting and starts whispering.
Is she just copying her sister? Is there something inherent in hearing toddlers that they think signing is actually just talking really quietly?!?! Where does this come from? Don't they notice that their Deaf teachers still can't understand them when they whisper?!? Augh!!
So her milk is stuck in her high chair, and she doesn't want to sign. So I decide to help her. I sign,"help-me." Jane says out-loud, "Help me!" I sign, "Copy me: help-me" Jane says, "Help me!" Repeat about 5 times. Finally, I give in and talk. "Jane, sign help me." And she does. And then I help her.
Toddlers are weird.
Anyway, she understands what we sign to her, so I'm sure someday she'll decide to whip out those hands and use them. Until then, dinner will be a little funny. Come to think of it, it will probably be a little funny after then, too!
Monday, February 11, 2019
Finally, a connection between Tagalog (and Russian) and ASL
A common theme in my musings is comparing and contrasting my two language learning experiences.
Tagalog came easily to me. I was immersed in the language. Somehow, I knew that language was the key to connecting with the people. I could live in Manila my whole life with no effect unless I could communicate with the people around me on a deep and sincere level. I learned a lot about how to learn a language quickly, with the help of the Spirit.
When I came home, I expected my life to continue to have Tagalog in it. I returned college in Logan, UT, which has approximately 0 Filipinos, and didn't really speak Tagalog for years. Then we moved to Maryland, and I found myself in a great Filipino community. I started interpreting for church. I helped several elderly Filipinas in our ward. I bought ube macapuno ice cream and Silver Swan Soy Sauce.
Marriner served a mission in Ukraine. He learned Russian and Russian Sign Language. For obvious reasons, he continued to study Russian (instead of RSL) when he came home. He took classes all the way through his PhD.
But we taught our kids ASL. Why? Because we tried learning Russian, but it was frustrating to be on such different levels, because it's tough to teach your kids a language they don't hear/see in use, because Spanish would be so useful, but it's a Latin language, and couldn't we come up with something more linguistically interesting than that? But mostly because of a poke from the Holy Ghost.
For the last few years, I've sorta wondered why God would invest so much into teaching us Russian and Tagalog, only to have us switch to ASL later.
This morning, I got a little insight into one benefit from learning Tagalog before I learned ASL. A friend wrote a note to our family, and mentioned the difficulties with cultural appropriation and insensitivity that sometimes happen when hearing people enter the Deaf culture, thanking us for our efforts to be genuine. And I know we've made plenty of mistakes and inadvertently hurt feelings. But I realized that my experiences joining Filipino culture through learning and speaking their language taught me how to approach another culture in an appropriate way. I think that people often join the Deaf community in a condescending way - they want to help the poor deaf people. For us, it was much more as if we'd moved to Manila or Kyiv - we were just there, we were learning the language so we could be participating members of the community, and we hope we have something to offer.
Now that I've written it out, it doesn't seem that impressive on paper. But it was really profound to me. Add one more thing to the list of ways Heavenly Father gave us experiences we needed to be prepared to be in the place where we are.
Tagalog came easily to me. I was immersed in the language. Somehow, I knew that language was the key to connecting with the people. I could live in Manila my whole life with no effect unless I could communicate with the people around me on a deep and sincere level. I learned a lot about how to learn a language quickly, with the help of the Spirit.
When I came home, I expected my life to continue to have Tagalog in it. I returned college in Logan, UT, which has approximately 0 Filipinos, and didn't really speak Tagalog for years. Then we moved to Maryland, and I found myself in a great Filipino community. I started interpreting for church. I helped several elderly Filipinas in our ward. I bought ube macapuno ice cream and Silver Swan Soy Sauce.
Marriner served a mission in Ukraine. He learned Russian and Russian Sign Language. For obvious reasons, he continued to study Russian (instead of RSL) when he came home. He took classes all the way through his PhD.
But we taught our kids ASL. Why? Because we tried learning Russian, but it was frustrating to be on such different levels, because it's tough to teach your kids a language they don't hear/see in use, because Spanish would be so useful, but it's a Latin language, and couldn't we come up with something more linguistically interesting than that? But mostly because of a poke from the Holy Ghost.
For the last few years, I've sorta wondered why God would invest so much into teaching us Russian and Tagalog, only to have us switch to ASL later.
This morning, I got a little insight into one benefit from learning Tagalog before I learned ASL. A friend wrote a note to our family, and mentioned the difficulties with cultural appropriation and insensitivity that sometimes happen when hearing people enter the Deaf culture, thanking us for our efforts to be genuine. And I know we've made plenty of mistakes and inadvertently hurt feelings. But I realized that my experiences joining Filipino culture through learning and speaking their language taught me how to approach another culture in an appropriate way. I think that people often join the Deaf community in a condescending way - they want to help the poor deaf people. For us, it was much more as if we'd moved to Manila or Kyiv - we were just there, we were learning the language so we could be participating members of the community, and we hope we have something to offer.
Now that I've written it out, it doesn't seem that impressive on paper. But it was really profound to me. Add one more thing to the list of ways Heavenly Father gave us experiences we needed to be prepared to be in the place where we are.
Monday, February 4, 2019
I guessed wrong.
One of the more unusual things about ASL is that one sign can mean a LOT of different things. Context, facial expression and use tell you what meaning is intended. And some of these double meanings don't immediately make sense to me, as an English speaker. For example, the same sign means "advise" or "cause" - it makes a difference whether I caused my kid to clean his room or just advised him to! Another one is "except" and "especially." Did I pray, "Please bless all my kids ESPECIALLY Jane" or "Please bless all my kids EXCEPT Jane." Yeah, these are the little nuances of language that make a good interpreter really important!
I'm getting better at these things, and I took a little leap of language that I thought would make sense. I wore a great looking dress yesterday, and a friend complimented it. I said, yes, it flatters my body type well.
Yeah, I guess flatter isn't used that way. The friend thought that was a funny joke and just cracked up.
Well, at least it was a good joke, and not just a bizarre thing to say :)
I'm getting better at these things, and I took a little leap of language that I thought would make sense. I wore a great looking dress yesterday, and a friend complimented it. I said, yes, it flatters my body type well.
Well, at least it was a good joke, and not just a bizarre thing to say :)
Friday, February 1, 2019
Marriner's graduation speech from 10 years ago
A wave of nostalgia has overcome me. My sister's husband is graduating with his PhD in May. (Yay, Nate!) As my sister makes plans for the giant party they are hosting, I've tried to remember what we did when Marriner graduated.
The January before the May graduation ceremony, a mentor of Marriner's nominated him to give the student response at graduation, a short speech to demonstrate that graduates can talk, not just be talked at. Surprisingly, he was selected, and therefore required to graduate in May, which ended up being more difficult than expected. But we made it :) Here's what we wrote about that day in our weekly email to our family:
"The day started off well enough until about 7:20, when I was taking Marriner up to practice his talk before the ceremony. He looked at his paper and realized he was supposed to be there at 7:15, not 7:30. Oops. (Even worse, when I got there, NONE of the doors had handles on the outside. I had to run around the whole building trying to get in, even being stopped by a police officer "Are you Marriner? They're looking for you over on the other side...") The best part of the ceremony was reserved seats on the 6th row - very nice! We got seated 5 minutes before the event started (thanks to me forgetting the tickets the first time we went up), which is about how long watching the procession is interesting.
"We took some nice pictures of Marriner receiving his degree, despite the little note in the program saying, "no photography or videos, please". Peer pressure did me in. Joseph (Marriner's teenaged brother) fell asleep while the undergraduates were filing endlessly across the stage, as did Lillian (with the rocking assistance of Aunt Rosie, who IS Lillian's favorite Aunt. Unfortunately, Lige and Ellis were hanging out with Aunt Nicole, which earned her their "favorite Aunt" status.) Finally, it was Marriner's turn to speak. The president of Purdue gave a very nice introduction which made him sound like he was a professor, not a student. The speech was WONDERFUL! Marriner was cool and natural the whole time (not like the Alumni Association president before him, who tripped over his words several times) and gave a wonderful speech. The audience was moved. The feedback was overwhelming. The photographer said that in 20 years of covering graduation, that was the best talk he'd heard. An acquaintance wrote Marriner and said that the Trustees asked for a copy of the speech. A friend of ours was at a dinner hosted by his advisor for all his graduating students where the other students (none of whom knows Marriner) started raving about his speech for no reason. It was really fun. It was fun having our family out. It was fun being in the spotlight. It was fun calling Marriner "Dr. Merrill." It was fun to realize that we really had finished what we set out for a mere 6 years ago!
"Marriner here: I have to comment here. Every once in a while, a whole lot of things coincide. I didn't necessarily 'feel' great spiritual promptings about this, but I knew even back when I was nominated that this would be my topic if chosen, and then 2 months ago we got a new home teacher who is the debate coach at Purdue and went over my written speech as well as listening to me and coaching me through the delivery issue, and there were lots of other things as well. Anyway, it was a special experience. I hope that it fulfilled whatever purpose it had.
"Anyway, after the ceremony, we took pictures, went to the departmental graduation reception, ate lunch, played frisbee, did an Eagle Scout project and watched a movie. Marriner got some fun presents, especially a saws-all, his dream toy. We were sad when everyone had to leave, especially Lige and Ellis, who LOVED having aunts and uncles over. (They like the grandparents, too!) We've spent the rest of the week catching up on stuff, re-starting the job search, gardening, etc."
The part that made me laugh the most was that Marriner went to an Eagle Project after his graduation. He hasn't changed! :)
Remembering all this made me wonder what happened to that speech he gave so many years ago. YouTube wasn't the ubiquitous repository of all world events back then like it is now. I found a little clip with a quote from his speech, but not the full thing. I dug around in our bin where DVDs go to die and found the recording of the ceremony Purdue had given him as a thank you gift. My kids had never seen it. Most of them didn't remember that their dad had spoken at his graduation. They said, "Is that REALLY Dad??" He was younger back then...and he looks like Sam the American Eagle when he's nervous. (Don't tell him I said that...)
I decided to take up a "little" project of clipping out Marriner's speech and storing it on YouTube so the kids could watch it when they wanted to. As I watched it, I thought, "This is a good speech! I should share it with my friends!" But of course, to share it with my friends, I need to caption it. And the YouTube auto-captioning did a horrible job. Anyway, it took me 2 whole days to get this little video clip for posterity. So all y'all better enjoy it! Because it was a pain in the bum.
I decided to take up a "little" project of clipping out Marriner's speech and storing it on YouTube so the kids could watch it when they wanted to. As I watched it, I thought, "This is a good speech! I should share it with my friends!" But of course, to share it with my friends, I need to caption it. And the YouTube auto-captioning did a horrible job. Anyway, it took me 2 whole days to get this little video clip for posterity. So all y'all better enjoy it! Because it was a pain in the bum.
Love, Christine
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