Life in progress


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X-Exclusion – #AtoZ Challenge

One of the hardest things for me to endure, as the mother of a Deaf child, is the exclusion of Alex by the hearing neighbourhood kids. Admittedly, part of it is my fault. Explaining why would be going off on a tangent, however, so I’ll leave that for tomorrow’s post.

Alex does have friends at school, but they live all over the province. Some are in residence on campus, many live miles away. So it’s difficult for him to get together with them outside of school. But like any kid, he sees children his own age outside his own house playing and he wants to join in. There are a couple who will play with him as long as their friends aren’t around – understandable in a way, since once they start discussing what they’re going to do, it’s hard to include Alex in the conversation. But even when they’re alone with Alex, they eventually get frustrated with trying to communicate with him. So they stop playing.

Then there are the kids across the street. He went over to play with them once, but they had no tolerance for him. They complained to one of Alex’s friends that does play with him that he “gives them a headache.” I wonder where they got that phrase from. It’s not often you see a perfectly healthy 7 or 10 year old child with an actual headache. Since that one time, they’ve sent him away and left me to explain to him that they don’t want to play with him. Or worse, they’ve let him stay and made fun of him, thinking he can’t understand. As I’ve mentioned before, most of sign language is body language and facial expression. He understands just fine. Incredibly, I’ve even had one of them accuse him of hitting her so she could use the excuse that he was mean to her. She figured, I suppose, that he would be unable to explain to me what really happened.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much we teach our children tolerance (though the kids and their parents across the street could use a lot more), they will be kids. They have their own interests, which don’t always include being able to play with only minimal communication. It’s a tough issue. One I can’t see a solution for.


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Windows – #AtoZ Challenge

Windows are wonderful, aren’t they? They keep us warm (or cool, depending on the season), and allow us at the same time to gaze upon the scenery outside. Through them we can watch our kids play… But windows are not that great when we want to say something through them, like, “Stop squirming already and come in for a pee!” Unless we know sign language!

I remember once driving up to a stop sign and seeing, half way up the street, my eldest son walking in the freezing cold.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“The mall,” he replied.

“Want a ride?”

“Sure, thanks.”

All from outside of yelling distance, and I didn’t have to roll the window down. Same thing when the kids had a play date in one of those huge indoor playgrounds. It didn’t matter that they were climbing through a kid-sized tube high above the floor and I was waiting for them to come down.

As soon as they looked at me, I signed, “Come down in 10 minutes for lunch.”

“What are we having?”

“Pizza.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Amazing, eh?

Problem was, it became a habit for me. One time that was particularly embarrassing, was when the father of one of my kids’ friends brought my son home. The dad didn’t get out of the car, he just let my son out and waved. Being the polite person I am, I signed “thank you.” He never spoke to me again. To this day I believe he thought I was blowing him a kiss.

Conclusion: sign language is a fantastic way to communicate, as long as everyone knows what you’re doing.


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One-Liner Wednesday – It was a mispronunciation

I went out a couple of weeks ago and left Alex alone with my best friend, John. Apparently while I was out, Alex let the puppy outside and back in numerous times, giving the dog a biscuit every time he came in. Eventually, John explained (in sign language) to Alex that if he keeps giving Winston cookies, he’ll get fat.

When John recounted the conversation, he signed it to me the way he’d signed it to Alex, and told me that Alex had laughed and laughed… It was actually fun, in a wicked sort of way, to explain to John that he’d inadvertently told Alex that if he kept giving Winston cookies, he’d get pregnant.

Rubbing it in

Rubbing it in

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#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com

#1linerWeds badge by nearlywes.com

Anyone who would like to participate, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do,
you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post, and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.

4. Add our new, very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!

5. Have fun!


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Thank you, WordPress!

I’m writing this short post to extend my warmest thank you to the people at WordPress who got our pingbacks working again after just twelve short days. In fact, I’d like to thank everyone, from the volunteers, to the Happiness Engineers, and all the way up to the developers! I mean honestly, what can be happier than a Happiness Engineer?

Won’t you join me in thanking them? After all, I’m certain that if all of us express our gratitude they’ll hear our collective voice and not change any more of our controls. Maybe they’ll even give us back some of the features they’ve already taken away to “help make our blogging experience better”!

Here’s to the great people at WordPress!!

P.S. Seriously, thanks for the pingbacks. Blogging prompts without them was annoying.


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Vibration – #AtoZ Challenge

Apart from heightened visual observational skills, my Deaf son, Alex, is extremely sensitive to vibration. Often, when I’m trying to get his attention I’ll stomp on the floor. Even across the room whilst wearing shoes, he can feel my attention-grabbing technique – unless he’s trying to ignore me, which leaves me jumping up and down in frustration like a mad-woman. I swear, if I had a camera in my house… Of course this only works on a wooden floor. If we’re on concrete or outside I have to make sure he can see me.

This sensitivity also accounts for his terror of thunderstorms. He doesn’t need to hear the crash, he can feel it. Coupled with the flash of lightning, it’s rare for him to sleep while there’s a storm going on.

I couldn’t find the interview that Ellen did with Marlee Matlin when she was on “Dancing With The Stars,” but here’s the interview with Nyle DiMarco and his partner, where Ellen mentions how Ms. Matlin danced by feel.

https://widgets.ellentube.com/videos/0-mylh1u42/

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.


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Understanding – #AtoZ Challenge

You know when your toddler learned a new word a few days ago and then tries to say it again, but can’t quite pronounce it? Even though you ask him or her to repeat it, a lot of the time you still can’t figure out what he or she is trying to say, right? It’s like that for me every single day.

The Deaf school that my son, Alex, attends is a godsend in many ways. But he comes home with a heightened vocabulary that I just can’t comprehend. And it’s not as though I can look it up. I can find words I want to sign because I know how they are spelt. But finding a sign in the dictionary when you don’t know what the sign is, is like trying to figure out what written Chinese means.

So Alex dumbs it down for me. For instance, he was trying to explain to me the other day that his friend had invited him over to his place to play. But I didn’t know the sign “invited.” I got the friend’s name, (which is a task all on its own, because names are invented by Deaf people on a person to person basis) and I got the sign for “go” and “house.” While I was trying to tell Alex he couldn’t go, he was signing, “I was invited.” Seeing that Mom wasn’t understanding him, yet again, he went the long way around.

Alex: [Friend’s] mom talked to [friend], told me fine, [friend] asked me to go to his house.

Me: [Friend’s] mom said okay you go?

Alex: Yes.

It’s like living with a game of charades.

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.


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#SoCS – Thank you

It’s been a while since I said thank you to all of you who visit my blogs, and all who participate in my prompts. When I started out, I said thank you in the comments of every participating post. Then I figured eventually everyone must be getting sick of saying, “You’re welcome,” so I stopped.  One thing I haven’t meant to stop doing is visiting every post that’s linked on the day it’s posted, but I have. And I regret it, but I haven’t been able to keep up.

Truth is, I’ve been pretty tapped lately. Between the kids and all their issues, my mother who is losing it a bit more every day, problems with my house, the puppy, trying to edit my books, trying to actually get off the couch to stop the spreading of my ass, housework, appointments, shopping, endless paperwork for my kids’ services that never seems to get done… oh, and blogging. But the thing is, THIS is important to me. It feels as though it should be at the bottom of the list, but the truth is this place is one of the main things anchoring me to sanity. It’s the only writing I do, and I need to write.

And what’s wonderful about my blog that isn’t true of writing novels, is that I get to talk to all of you. You who inspire me. You who keep me going. You all who never ever let me down, who I can count on to make me smile.

So again, thank you for being here. Thank you for making my prompts a success. Thank you for your support.

SoCS badge 2015

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS April 23/16


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The Trickster – #AtoZ Challenge

My Deaf son, Alex, loves to play jokes on people. Seeing surprised expressions is one of his joys in life – it’s why he loves watching “The Price Is Right” and “Just for Laughs Gags” so much. One of his favourite things to do is hide from us, and then pop out to scare us. Except he doesn’t realize that he needs to be quiet. So it’s not uncommon to walk into a room and hear Alex either giggling his head off or screaming with excitement, knowing he’s about to frighten someone. Of course we all play along, shading our eyes and dramatically looking around while signing, “Where’s Alex?”

It’s the same when he and his friends play hide and seek. There’s no such thing as sneaking around quietly – as long as they can’t see each other, they’re golden.

It just makes me laugh. 🙂

You can watch the video with the sound off – the audio is just music and a laugh track. Worth the watch.

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.

 

 


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Safety – #AtoZ Challenge

I’ve spoken at length before about the dangers of traffic when one is deaf, or deafened by headphones. I think it’s actually worse for the latter; as I explained in this post, we hearing people don’t realize how much we don’t use our powers of visual observation.

However, there are many other safety concerns for the mother of a Deaf child.

Chatting while driving: I can sign to Alex, but it’s hard to take my eyes off the road long enough to see what he’s saying. For the most part I make him wait until I stop the car. It makes for some pretty lonely drives for him – at least I have the radio.

Wandering off: You can’t call a Deaf child back, so it’s important to either stay in Alex’s line of sight or physically hang on to him. Letting him walk away from me has led to a few hair raising experiences.

The puppy: Dogs growl before they bite. Alex doesn’t hear the warning. This is a new thing for me, since we’ve only had Winston since just before Christmas. I really need to get him to puppy classes. Winston, not Alex. Then again…

watching the cat

Alex and Winston, watching the cat

My A to Z theme concerns the joys and challenges of being the hearing mother of my Deaf son, Alex. To learn more about his beginnings in life, click here to go to my first A to Z entry.


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS April 23/16

As you probably know, having been informed by either your calendar or your internal almost-the-weekend clock, it’s Friday! And that means it’s time for your Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. The pingbacks are working again, which makes me very happy, and makes all of our jobs easier for the prompt. Again, I’m going to do my bit to potentially help you out if you’re participating in the A to Z Challenge. Here’ your prompt:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “ta.”  The word, “ta,” is British slang for thank you: use it this way, or find any other word that starts with those two letters. Enjoy!

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at this week’s prompt page and check to make sure it’s here in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Anyone can join in!

To make your post more visible, use the SoCS badge! Just paste it in your Saturday post so people browsing the reader will immediately know your post is stream of consciousness and/or pin it as a widget to your site to show you’re a participant. Wear it with pride!!

SoCS badge 2015

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!