Going back to church

 Guess what - we went to church last week!

Confession: if it was up to me, I'd rather stay home.

Not that I don't love church - I do! But right now, I can take the sacrament, watch sermons, and discuss the gospel from home. When we go to church, it's the same...only we have to find everyone's shoes. And we have to worry about staying germ-free. What does that spell? Stress!

Further confession: I know it will get better. For example, we'll find everyone's shoes eventually. And as we get used to our "new normal" we'll do a better job of figuring out how to make it less stressful.

So I'm not really THAT sad about going to church. But I seriously need to buy some new shoes. We had two kids worshiping in crocs last week.

The worst part was the music. Of course, in an ASL branch, singing isn't a central part of the experience, but for me, it is. When we walked in, there was no prelude music. That's usually my job, but I know that everything we touch, we have to sanitize, so I stayed away from the organ. Also, I wasn't sure if my kids could sit on their bench without touching other stuff or running around. So, no prelude music. It made the stringent sanitary procedures more stark. After a bit, I felt a bit on edge. I suggested, "Why don't we sing a song, to help us feel like we're at church?" So we started to sing...then we were reminded that singing isn't allowed. Sigh. We had a signed opening song - the quietest song ever - which helped me feel a little better. But I MISS SINGING! Sigh again.

After church was done, we were excused one family at a time, and left without talking to anyone. Tripple sigh.

I think it would all be ok for me if we could sing. Maybe I'll talk to the branch president about at least getting some prelude music. 

And thank heavens it won't stay this way forever!

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This week, we had church at home again, and I decided to start pushing ASL back into our church routine. Of course, the most effective way to do this is with incentives. (Cough, bribes...nope, actually, they're different. Even though they look the same...) ANYWAY...I told the kids we could have Primary in English, or if they wanted to do it in ASL, we could have an Otter Pop at the end. They voted for ASL, but it was hard for them to keep it the whole way through. Again - signing and comprehension are not nearly so much of an obstacle as the difficulty of just keeping their eyes turned in one direction! Sam got grumpy in the middle - I think signing makes him grumpy - and got sent to his room to cool off. Everyone else had their Primary lesson and enjoyed their popsicle. Sam tried about 15 more times to get through the Primary lesson - each time getting frustrated, yelling at his Mom, being sent to cool off, and coming back to try again. But guess what - he finally did it! Two hours later, he ran off with his popsicle. 

It was a long day of trying to be a calm, kind mom. I made it, but only because bedtime was observed strictly...maybe even a little advanced.. :) :) 

Coronavirus

 I've been pretty quiet since coronavirus hit the world 5 months ago. I remember one Wednesday night, looking at the news and realizing that my spring break plans to visit my parents in Paris for a month from then were just not going to happen. And the next morning, waking up to find that indeed, international travel had been forbidden. That night, the schools announced they were closing, and students would come one last day to pick up lessons and posessions before they closed for 2 weeks, to clean. One of my biggest questions from this whole period of uncertainty is is, why on earth did I not tell my kids to bring home everything of theirs from school? Did I really think the school was just going to be closed for 2 weeks? I don't think I expected 2 weeks, but I sure didn't expect school to close the entire rest of the school year. And now, here were are 5 months later, and we still don't have Lige's graphing calculator out of his locker...

So many things have happened in the last 5 months, and so many more things HAVEN'T happened! After a few weeks, I started deleting things on my calendar, to prevent grief at what we were missing. Sometimes, I missed something, and then I'd feel sad at what we weren't doing right then. But in a lot of ways, I like my quiet, family-centered life. I like not having the stress of getting 8 people all the places they need to be (together or individually) at the right times with all the right stuff. Definitely a lot of mixed feelings as I look back. 

As you all know, one of the biggest changes has been not going to church. This was a big change for all of us, but we had some unique considerations. Do we have home church in English? Do we keep going in ASL so our kids can learn better? 

It was a bit of a flexible policy. We liked having the kids play the piano, so they got experience in accompanying. That meant singing instead of signing the songs. We like teaching lessons in ASL, but guess what - the little kids do NOT pay attention in ASL. We fought that one for weeks. We tried all sorts of incentives and motivations, of the positive and negative sorts, but finally decided that learning the gospel was more important than learning ASL at this time. But the sacrament prayers are still in ASL. Lige has never even done the sacrament prayer in English. I'm sure he could do it, but... 

When you suddenly have more free time, you realize that all those things you'd always wanted to do, but never had time, you can do them now! Here's what popped onto our list: music practice, exercise, and ASL. A couple of my kids started practicing music 1-2 hours every day, and loved it. We all started jogging, walking, doing yoga, etc. A cousin sponsored a 5k race (remote) that we had a blast competing in. And, we knew we wanted to practice ASL more, but language practice sorta needs other people, so that was more tricky.

We tried some creative things to get us to practice. There was a church devotional that we watched only in ASL, then tried translating it. We. Were. Horrible. But we got the gist of it. It was good to really delve into it, and try to recognize the signs we didn't know. It would have helped a lot if we could ask someone about them. But we were stuck at home. 

Our next challenge was to watch 2 hours of ASL by native signers. After that, we had a challenge to do a voice-off day. The older kids did great at that, but the 3 younger kids hated it. They felt really isolated and ignored all day long. They picked fights, yelled at people, refused to sign, and basically made the day really tough. I think we tried doing the voice-off day too early, while people were still dealing with the stress of life upheaval from the sudden quarantine. And basically, it flopped. 

We tried another voice-off day a few weeks later, taking the things we learned from the first time and changing the rules to make things more attractive to the little kids. And that one worked a lot better. No tantrums, everyone engaged. We did it on a Sunday, when we already do a lot of signing, anyway. After the day, I thought maybe I would just do ASL-only every Sunday. So the next few weeks I tried it, but what I found was that the little kids just ignored me all day. If I was teaching a lesson, I spent 3/4 of the time trying to get someone to look at me. It was really frustrating and dull for everyone else. Who wants to go to a church lesson where the only thing the teacher says is, "Hey, look at me" for 45 minutes straight?

So, we backed off the ASL for a bit. We did find something that works with the little kids recently - we quiz them on our weekly devotional broadcast, so they are rewarded for paying attention. Because if they'll just watch the darn stuff, they'll be able to learn it. They just have to pay attention! 

Once again, our experiences remind us that this is just a little taste of the complexities that deaf families face every day. We have a lot of sympathy for our friends that battle kids not wanting to pay attention to sign language! 

One of the biggest blessings was a member of the branch offering to teach us some ASL lessons. They only lasted a few months, while she had some downtime between semesters, but I was able to ask a lot of the questions that had been holding me back, and I also got some good recommendations for YouTube channels to watch for language study. Big blessing! 

Anyway, I think we're all better at ASL than we were 5 months ago, which is something, considering that we haven't actually gone to church in that long. We've felt really blessed, even with the challenges that certain kids have presented! :) Some of us love the challenge of learning languages, and some others are ONLY doing this because God told them too - they would have preferred to take some time off while we're stuck home. But I'm proud of my kids being supportive and cheerful with their parents' antics!