The Signing Family

Here again I have a book in my hands that I wish I had 2 years ago. The information in this book is invaluable, and I would suggest reading it even if you are sure that you want your deaf or hard of hearing child to learn oral communication and don't want to mess with signs. It's description of the different sign systems is more in depth than anything I have found elsewhere. Let's face it finding out that your child is deaf or severely hard of hearing is overwhelming, a little like your baby being handed to you and being told that they will only speak in German, or French, or some other foreign language that you have no command of. For an extroverted chatter-head like me, despite all of John's medical problems I just kept holding on to the idea of some day he will talk to me. Some day we will talk about all the awful medical junk that he has had to endure, we'll talk about why he has to have a g-tube and other kids don't, why he needs a power chair to get around and other kids get to use their legs and run, more importantly we would talk about Jesus and how much He loves us, oh we would talk about everything. So when we found out John was deaf and that there was oral schools for the deaf where the kids learned to talk just like everyone else it was easy to live in denial of both the deafness and the need for something more/different than talking to enjoy language. Heck at that point I didn't even realize that there was a difference between language and talking.

The first few months with John's new hearing aids were heady times. He learned so fast, he went from not having a clue of what we were saying to getting everything, but still there was no understandable expression of language. When we would take his hearing aids out he would babble and carry on, but when they were in he was silent and listening. It didn't take too long for his therapist to realize that there was more than just a hearing impairment going on here. John was also apraxic, he could think of the stuff he wanted to say but couldn't make his mouth say it. John was attending an oral deaf school at that time and so introducing the first signs were both non-conformist and breathtakingly beautiful. His OT was the first to try signs with John, thinking that he would have a very hard time both understanding the concept of signs and making them with his impaired fine motor skills she came to the house with 5 little plastic animals and 5 signs for them and an hour to work on it. Five minutes after she was here she was out of animals and signs and John was enthusiastically signing their names over and over again. We moved on to more signs, 'more', 'help', 'want', 'love you' and many others over the course of the hour and consequently through the ensuing year at oral deaf school. At the school we had the most amazing therapist, she was intent on communicating with John through whatever means that he could access and so readily switched over to signs. He was getting them, and getting them fast and he was so much happier, so much less frustrated, and so were we.

We have left the oral deaf school behind and with it our delusions have been slowly wiped away too. We have realized that with his hearing aids John hears well, but not well enough to catch everything that is said, he really needs us to sign to him while we speak, and even though he does occasionally say 'mom' or 'dad' or even 'dog' we have left his speaking in God's hands because it seems that only through some divine miracle will we hear John talk with his mouth. His hands are another issue, there we are learning to sign faster and more consistently and trying our best to surround John with complete communication, both talking and signing. The more we do this the more we find that John is signing to us. He still is mostly telling us what he needs and wants, but he is getting more and more into telling us what he sees. We have an excellent OT who is working to strengthen John's hands so that his signing is clearer and we also have a MiniMo a talking device. We are hoping to teach John to communicate in several ways, we would like him to be fluent in sign to the extent that his muscles will allow him to be, we would like for him to be able to use his talker, as we call it, to communicate with those who don't sign, and we would like to teach him to use a keyboard so that he can use a talker that lets him be in complete control but also so that he can text and email and maybe even keep a blog of his own some day.

John is still not a chatter head, an extrovert yes, chatter head not so much, at least not yet. We keep working on it. He's so very smart, he's a problem solver to the nth degree and we've never seen him really want to learn something that he couldn't master, even at 5, well except for talking, but then somethings are out of his control and ours. I will post a lot more here as we go along, both with teaching John to communicate more through sign and with his talker and through the whole learning to read process. For today I just had to share this book The Signing Family, if your child or the child of someone that you know has been diagnosed with a hearing impairment, get the book, read it and Literacy and Your Deaf Child too, I wish that we had them on the day that John was diagnosed, I can't change that now, but please, even if you don't think you want to even consider sign just read these, whether you do sign with your child or not, at least you will be fully informed. As the hearing parent of a deaf child I won't kid you, this is no easy road to walk, and it's certainly not an easy decision to make, but you must make a decision about your child's mode of communication, don't default into what looks easy and don't make a decision until you are fully informed.

Literacy and Your Deaf Child

I read this book because I have been wracking my brains and Mark's and anyone else who was willing to listen and think about it, about how do we teach John to read. Mark has been working with John on recognizing the different sounds that vowels make, John cannot distinguish the short sounds on their own, at least not enough to tell you which letter makes that sound, making it pretty evident that an off the shelf phonics program isn't going to work well as is, and whole word, well that's a whole different can of worms.

So what I gleaned from the book is this, no one knows why or how a deaf child learns to read. That's almost a verbatim quote and it gives this mommy no comfort whatsoever. The book also explains that no hearing device, aids or implants, corrects hearing enough that a child can acquire language to a high degree naturally like hearing children can. The book does however discuss what you can do to help your child learn to read, it holds teaching reading as teachers job, but anti-homeschool bias aside it has some really good information, things that I had not really thought out or hadn't thought out far enough.

The first thing it talks about is something that we learned a long time ago there is a big difference between language and talking. Language acquisition for hearing children without cognitive impairment comes as naturally as breathing. Just being surrounded by people talking teaches them to do so, and doing things intentionally only makes things better. For deaf kids of deaf parents language acquisition is also natural, they are immersed in ASL from the moment they are born and learn it just like hearing kids learn the native language of their parents. Aside from cognitive inability and such, the kids that have the worst time of this are deaf kids of hearing parents. Speaking as a hearing parent of a deaf kid this is a big mountain to climb.

The author defines 3 levels of literacy, functional meaning that you can read enough to know what's in a box or which sign says stop, cultural meaning that you can read enough to get what's going on around you and interact with it on a basic level, such as reading a newspaper article about a sports team and understanding what happened to the team. The last category of literacy is critical literacy, the ability to read and comprehend language to such a degree that you can not only interact with it but use it to change your surroundings for the better, to impact your society. That is the level of literacy that Mark and I so thoroughly enjoy and that is our hearts desire for John, second only to his remaining in faith to the end, critical literacy is really our one and only educational goal.

The book talks a lot about what critically literate deaf people's parents did with and for them when they were kids. Lots and lots of intense, intentional language experiences. Mark and I have always talked to John, read to him and such, but according to this book we are just barely scratching the surface of what it is going to take to give him this level of literacy that we want him to have. I have to give this copy of the book back to the library, but will be ordering our own copy from Amazon, because it's going to need lots of rereads, lots of underlining, highlighting and notes in the margins. I wish we would have had the book on the day that we got the diagnosis of deafness, frankly that would have been oh so very much more helpful than all the info that we were given about oral-deaf education, a soap box that I'll try to stay down off of at the moment.

Monday when we go into Columbia we will be headed into the library for another title, one recommended by this author, another one which I am pretty sure I will have wish that I had 3 years ago: The Signing Family: What every parent should know about sign communication by D. A. Stewart and B. Luetke-Stahlman. John is so very smart, he can run electronic things such as the DVR remote, my cell phone and computer, he drives his chair in ways that tells me that he is watching and learning cause and effect and has great spatial awareness, just one look in his eyes and you know that you are dealing with a smart, smart little boy. The down side to all this is that John is trapped inside his body, not completely like an autistic person, but he has real problems with language expression. He can tell us what he needs and wants for the most part, he comes and gets us to show us things that are funny, and can express some feelings, that he loves us and that he hurts. He is constantly learning and we have had this debate for a long time whether we should concentrate on teaching him to express himself or fill his head with knowledge or do both. We've always kinda landed on the do both choice, but I am seeing from this book that while we need to be doing both we have got to crank up the work on expressive language way beyond anything we've ever even considered doing before.

I have times when I feel completely inadequate for this job, but I know that the schools can't give him what he needs, and while his therapists are doing a great job they too can't give him everything he needs for learning language to the extent that we want him to enjoy, it's up to us and by God's grace we will do the best that we can and rely on Him to help us through our weakness and inadequacies.

The Story of Grump and Pout

All you shoe loving mommies need this book. Grump is the only monster that wears shoes, ill-fitting, full of junk shoes that make her so grumpy that everyone forgot her name was Rose. When her husband, Pout, pays the cobbler for a new pair of shoes it's like he gets a whole new wife. The whole book is cute, and the expressions on the characters faces tell the story even without the words, but the words are great too. Of course now that I check the illustrator is Sandra Boynton I should have known.

John's List

*** I give up - John's list just isn't going to work, it comes down to reading the kid books, or keeping a list of them. Ugh, I was hoping this would help me remember to make sure that I read to him everyday, but lately he's been taking that into his own hands anyway, for who can resist a little boy clutching a book to his chest, signing read, read.

Our goal for John is 3 books a day for March, so I'm sure there are going to be lots of repeats as we generally read to John the books that he picks out. One of these days I will have to post pictures of the shelves that Mark made for him, ones designed just so that John could go and pick out his own books.

16. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
15. Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss
14. Go, Dog Go by P. D. Eastman
13. Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise by Katie DiCamillo
12. Swimmy by Leo Lionni
11. No Roses for Harry by Gene Zion
10. Big Red Barn boardbook by Margaret Wise Brown
9. Curious George Gets a Medal by Margaret and H. A. Rey
8. The Story of Grump and Pout by Jamie McEwan
7. Roll Over! A Counting Song Illustrated by Merle Peek
6. Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloy Graham
5. Harry and the Lady Next Door by Gene Zion
4. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber
3. No Roses for Harry by Gene Zion
2. A Song for Little Toad by Vivian French
1. Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloy Graham

The Grandfather Medicine

I love mystery books, someone dies in the first chapter or two and I get to spend the rest of the book figuring out who did it. Along the way I get to enjoy the characters and the setting. There are a few things that a mystery writer can do to insure that I never pick up another one of their books, Jean Hager in The Grandfather Medicine did none of those things and so I am looking forward to reading all of the rest of her books. The things that spoil a mystery book for me is a plot that is too transparent, if I can figure out who the killer is in the first third of the book and the rest of the book just confirms my knowledge then I'm done, too simple, too easy, I'll go read one of John's books. On the other hand the book has to have a good, and believable twist or two. This book delivers on that, not only are the twists not transparent, but they also make sense. I like it when I read the authors conclusion to the mystery and then in my head I can go back and pick up where the clues were that made this ending make sense. This writer is very good at that, good enough to deserve a second read later on down the road, even though I already know who the bad guy is. Characters have to evoke emotion, I need to like the good guys and dislike the bad guys, and she does that too. I like characters that leave the pages of a book and walk around with me, now then I will admit that these didn't walk around for long, but they did walk and I look forward to seeing what happens to the main characters in the next book. Justice must be done, better if it is meeted out upon the evil doers by something they themselves have done, or created, but even good old fashioned caught by the police justice works if done well. I like to know where I'm at in a book, I don't want every detail of every flower, cloud, weapon, etc., to the point that I feel like I'm reading a catalog, but it's nice to be able to see where I'm at in the book. I found this book when I went searching for why Tony Hillerman, one of my favorite authors, hasn't written another book. Well Mr. Hillerman is dead, God rest his soul, and bless him for making comments on other authors that he liked to read. Most of Tony Hillerman's book are on the Navajo reservation and give a picture not only of the story being told, but of the people and culture of the place where it is told. I've lived around enough reservations and worked with enough Native Americans over the years to feel a ring of truth in Hillerman's writing, fiction though it is. Jean Hager writes about the Cherokee people, my dad is 1/2 Cherokee and the other 1/2 is Irish, so seeing the culture and people is quite fascinating. I look forward to more of her books to see more of the culture and people of the Cherokee. She recommends some non-fiction books too and I might get to those eventually, but for now she is filling two of my favorite interests - mystery stories, getting to walk around in another culture and learn what it's like while I'm still here keeping up with life and taking care of John. So if you like mystery books, I'd give this one a try, and if you like Tony Hillerman books, it's for sure to be a hit.

Fartch, It's What's For Lunch

I don't as a rule fry things, occasionally I will fry chicken for the man whose favorite food in the entire world is fried chicken, but not very often. A couple days ago in a search to find more ways to use potatoes, I bought a 10 pound bag at a very good price and don't want them to go bad, I came across a doughnut recipe, yum, yum, very good, but it left half the dough and it needed to get done. Today for lunch the chicken loving man went to the grocery and came home with chicken wings, our very most absolute favorite piece of fried chicken, so we marinated them in soy sauce and rolled them in a little flour and fried them up, after frying the doughnuts of course. As I was standing looking at lunch, doughnuts on one side of the stove piled up and chicken wings on the other side piled up I meant to say 'look honey, we're having fat and starch for lunch,' but that's not how it came out, instead I said, 'look honey, we're having fartch for lunch.' What a day!

Saving the World

Last night after John was tucked in bed sound asleep, after all was done for the day and Mark and I were relaxing watching one of our favorite shows a thought occurred to me. We love to watch Criminal Minds, on that show is a new mom just returned to work, she has a job saving people and stopping evil, one that is now complicated by her new vocation of mommy. So many times I feel like there is nothing I can do, the world is so very evil, what with presidents who sign bills that guarantee the murder of more children, old people who are left alone and uncared for, the wanton murder of whole groups of people around the world and just the little evils that happen all the time, every day, every where, what can I do. I'm just a mom and I can't save the world. Then it occurred to me that my job isn't to save the whole world, my job isn't to save my child from the world, or save the world from my child, depending on which day we are talking about and how evil the evil grin is that morning. My job is to save this world, by God's grace, one day, one hour, one decision at a time, my job is to make this world that John lives in one in which he can grow, both in mind and body to be an independent free thinker, one who can tell truth from falsehood and one who can know right from wrong. That's a pretty darn overwhelming job, one in which I know that all the good I do is of Christ, and that all the bad I do is covered by His grace and forgiveness so that I may go on one more day.

This cartoon came through my homeschool list today, thought it was pretty relevant to my ramblings. You'll have to click on it to see the whole thing, but I think I might print this one for the fridge.