One thing we've been putting off as a family is a big stretching ASL challenge. We all know we should do it. We know we need to push ourselves to get off the plateau we're on. But life is so busy and tiring, and we just haven't done it.
But now that we live in the time of "Not having enough time isn't a good excuse any more", especially with no school work this week...well, we have to do it.
Two and a half years ago, we did the hardest thing we've ever done, and turned off our voices for a full day. It was so hard and educational and good for us. We wanted to do something like that again. We've noticed that our little kids don't sign so much as they used to. And to be honest, I don't have a lot of signing opportunities right now, either, and my expressive capabilities are suffering! So, we set a reward for a day without talking and told everyone to turn their voice off when they woke up in the morning.
Well, friends, the day did NOT go well. One of our children fought with us the whole day because he was whispering the whole time he signed, and we kept telling him that wasn't fair, but he doesn't see it that way. One of our children pretty much just hid in her room all day. One of our children couldn't remember that it was signing day unless she had tape on her mouth. One of our children woke up on the wrong side of bed and walked around the house for the first two hours loudly proclaiming, "I'm not going to sign today. This is stupid!" And the last two of my children, we learned, do NOT know as much sign language as we thought. They have great comprehension. We thought they could sign back if they wanted. Turns out, they can't.
In summary, everyone had a rotten day. If our day had been a cartoon, a dark and stormy cloud would have been looming over one house in the neighborhood despite the beautiful and perfect weather. My whole day was spent saying, "Shh!" Everyone else's day was spent shooting mom angry looks.
What went wrong? We had a good prize (which we did NOT get), and we thought we had good buy-in from everyone before the day started. I think it was just that storm cloud that showed up and put everyone in a bad mood. Because we can't really pinpoint a reason why this should have been so bad.
So last night, we called a retreat. At the beginning, we'd talked about trying to go two or three days, but we've put that on hold. Today, I think we're going to convalesce and nurse our wounds by watching movies. And we'll see if we can pull up some energy to work on ASL again towards the end of the week.
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