Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

At church, we've been studying the book of Exodus.  Today, we focused on Moses' response to God calling him (from the burning bush, if you remember the story) to go convince the Egyptian king to free the millions of Israelite slaves. God tells Moses to go AND follows up his command with promises and encouragement: I will lead you. The elders will accept your message. I will raise my hand and strike the Egyptians. He (the king) will let you go. Moses's response?  "What if they don't believe me?" God has just said, "The elders will accept your message."  Obviously, Moses doesn't think God is telling the truth. So God preforms THREE miracles to encourage Moses.  Each miracle proves that nothing is more powerful than God.  No fear, no seemingly-unbeatable enemy, no national superpower. (Read the story in Exodus chapters 3 and 4. ) Moses' response? "Lord, I'm not good with words. I've never been. My words get all...

I posted a blog covering our June summer fun in and around Austin. We ended up repeating some of those activities during July and August, then added a few new activities, including our day trip to San Marcos . If you're looking for more ways to beat the heat in the sweltering Austin July and August, here are some ways we found and enjoyed: Omni Barton Creek Resort Look for a good deal on an overnight stay and enjoy a quick getaway.  If you're fortunate enough to have friends or family visiting town and staying here, you can make a fun day of visiting! Swimming, putt-putt, and a treasure-hunt inside the hotel. View from the pool. Peaceful atmosphere. Putt-putt. Barton Springs Pool at Zilker Park The area surrounding Barton Springs was recently renovated.  Barton is always a good plan on a hot summer day.  The only thing that prevents us from going more often is the rule about kids wearing "floaties."  Floats of any kind, including the wearable ves...

A few things we've learned and what we would like others to understand: This happens to normal families.  I don't know what I was expecting, but the families in our Intensive Outpatient Program were normal, caring, intact families.  Through this process, I've become less judgmental of parents who have what appears to be a difficult teen.  I'll add that these were all families willing to put in some serious time commitment and work to help their teens and themselves heal and improve.  This DBT group was not court-mandated, but completely voluntary. We were honored to share life with these families during the 7-week program. Parents can't discipline or force their kids into mental health.   We as parents have had to become very aware of behaviors that are simply typical teenage rebellion, which result in discipline, or behaviors that occur because our teen truly does not know how to respond appropriately or how to manage a particular emotion she's having....

I’ll never forget the moment my teen first came to me and showed me the cuts on her arms.  I said the first thing that came into my head.  Big mistake.  I rolled my eyes, “Really?  That is SO stupid.” I wish I could take it back.  I’ve learned a lot since that August afternoon; one of those things being to bite my tongue and look for a way to validate what she’s experiencing.  The first thought in my head is most often not the appropriate response.  A better response would have been,  “Thank you for coming to me. Can we talk about it?” or “Wow…I’m not sure what to say right now,” or "I'm sorry I didn't realize how bad you were feeling." I simply could have hugged her.  But in that moment, I was angry.  I was instantly hearing criticism in my own head, “If you were a better mom, she never would have done this.”  “That family member was right. You couldn’t even manage 3 kids, so why would you have 2 more?”  I also heard, “Don't...

With many things in life, we take sides. We are either "for" or "against." On each side, you'll find extremists who will spin data to fit their view. Homeschooling, vaccinations, cochlear implants... you name it, we can argue about it. I often don't share a lot of intactivism material because much of it is in-your-face and extreme, even vulgar.   Intactivism is the support of keeping children intact without altering their genitals in any way.  Finally, a very well-done, scientific, reasonable video about genital cutting, which we call circumcision.  (He will talk about why our language is important.) Here's an article about it, too.  This is NOT intended pour guilt on parents who have already had their children circumcised. We parents simply have done what our parents and their parents did. We did what was culturally acceptable and even expected. We didn't have all the information. Parents are also victims of the practice.  But knowledge ...

In Part 2 of this series, I was excited to share some of what I learned about technology and using ASL eBooks.  Well, if you like the good, old fashioned paper book, have no fear!  Drs. Jean Andrews and Damara Paris from Lamar University , shared their team's research findings from the Alabama Emergent Literacy Study.  They focused on the " Adapted Little Books ." Below is only a small portion of their presentation.  There is so much information that goes beyond my knowledge, so I will direct this blog to parents of deaf emergent readers. As a homeschool mom, I'm very familiar with "little books."  We personally used Sonlight's own Fun Tales  with my three hearing kids. ( example )  You may be familiar with Bob Books .  The Alabama study used these 20 Little Books .  These "little books" are usually 6-7 pages, use high frequency words, have a close picture-word match,  and use short phrases to tell a whole story.  It ...

Using Technology for Literacy of ASL & English Bilingual Deaf Children That's another handful of words!  Basically, if you're teaching your deaf (or hearing) ASL/English bilingual child to read, there are some amazing tools out there to enrich that experience. At the conference , several different people presented on the topic of technology and ASL ebooks. VL2 Storybook Apps Check out their " About " page, too. Click here to get the book in the App Sto "VL2" stands for " Visual Language, Visual Learning " a Science of Learning center funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted by Gallaudet University.  The work they are doing is SUPER exciting for parents like me! Right now, there is only the Baobab book, but two more books are in the works.  Each book, priced at a bargain $6.99, is packed with a rich literary experience for your bilingual child.  As the website says, "Every child loves and deserves a great story....

This weekend, I was fortunate to attend the (get ready, this is a handful) " ASL & English Bilingual Consortium for Early Childhood Education " Summit IV Conference. Building Bilingual Partnerships: Home, School, and Community I say I was fortunate because I attended as a lay person.  The conference is aimed at teachers, researchers, and administrators working in the field of Deaf Education.  I'm a parent of Deaf and hard-of-hearing kids. I also happen to be an educator since I've homeschooled my hearing kids for over 8 years.  I am somewhat knowledgeable regarding ASL/English bilingualism since my professional field is teaching ASL and interpreting.  However....I was surrounded by people who knew worlds and worlds more than I about educating Deaf, bilingual kids!  They have challenges like I never imagined.  These educators and administrators are fighting a long battle that shows only slow, incremental progress.  (The battle being that agai...

I wanted to comment on Dr. White's TedxTalk video " Establishing a Sound Foundation for Children Who Are Deaf or Hard Of Hearing" .  With my permission, he used video of our boys signing in the car with their dad.   I will comment in order of the lecture, so you may want to watch the first several minutes to get a context: First, Karl White says, "If not identified early, the deaf child fails to develop language, has a difficult time in school, is socially isolated, and will have a menial or no job later in life."  The entire opening is a typical scare tactic used on hearing parents.  The opening line of this TedTalk begins with a negative view of being deaf. Let me enthusiastically state that I support early identification! It WILL increase the child’s chances for success IF the parents begin pouring language into their child right away. But, even if it is not discovered that the child is deaf until later, the child CAN succeed and doesn’t have to be beh...

My blogging time has recently been overtaken by a more dense school schedule, my working outside the home part time for the first time in years, and by editing video for our YouTube page . The most recent video shows Ken and Travis looking at mostly names and a few words.  I could blog about the boys' language development, but the videos speak for themselves, so check out out page if you haven't already. So, how are we all doing almost seven months after the littles were added to our family?  The boys have attached well.  So well, I have to keep reminding myself to continue to be purposeful in attachment activities and behaviors on my part.  The boys are almost inseparable. They are each other's best friend, playmate and brother.  It's been a sweet joy to witness. The older three Brownies continue to adore and help care for their ne...