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.
I've been meaning to ask you about the competition since Lil's birthday, so thank you for explaining it!! I seem to recall that they had to tell you about what they watched? Or am I misremembering?
ReplyDeleteYes, with the first competition, we had to explain our movie during dinner. That caused some stress for Marriner and the older kids, who are prone to missing dinner on occasion, so we lightened that rule. Mom and Dad still ask you what you watched, and we discuss it, but you can still get the star even if you don't discuss it at dinner. (Which is exactly why we had a small challenge before the big one, so that we could tweak the rules and make them fair!)
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