On the 5th day of Christmas: Signing camera

Reuben signing Special to Me from Baby Signing Time, Vol 2

This is one of our favourite songs to sing together and Reuben, seen here with a stinking cold and 3 days post tonsillectomy op, signs it almost word perfectly. Looking up to me with his sweet soulful eyes behind Ray Boyd (Jerry Maguire) glasses*, Reuben signs "special to me" to ask me to sing the song. There are a few out takes for this video and amusingly in one of them Reuben keeps signing away from me, pointing to the floor, until I realise he's actually signing that he wants the real Rachel Coleman from Baby Signing Time on the DVD player as he tries to tackle the video buttons directly (we've been used to the remote not working so the boys have been crawling under the cabinet to get to the video player). I don't blame you Reuben: we're all in love with what she's done for American Sign Language (ASL), children with special needs and perfectly typical kids too regarding increasing their vocabulary! The song is very heartfelt from me to Reuben. I hope you can see all the beautiful individual words and phrases he uses in real ASL to sing the song. He only stumbles near the end because I didn't see his sign for "family" and it's not til I watch the video on playback that I see I've thrown him off course. As you'll see, he signs with great concentration, having a little laugh along the way during his favourite parts. He also signs with great timing and pace. Please excuse the quality of the hand held video though I cut myself off deliberately so you can focus on Reuben's hands and when you do so focus, you'll see the intricacies of our beautiful signing miracle.

*Yes, the new glasses are a hoot! Just think, Ray Boyd, the little kid in Jerry Maguire. We've had a few comparisons of late and hey, these glasses are much more baby Callum stealing unfriendly.

All about Reuben

Signing pumpkin with pneumonia

Reuben, 3 days after the start of his treatment for pneumonia and on sparkling form today, back at UCLA School, signing away at circle time, excelling in his developmental assessment with his occupational therapist and beyond excited with his speech therapist this evening, saying words such as apple, car, baby, dog and flower.

Looking back to last week, Reuben had an assessment at UCLA school. Entering the small office of Dr L, he looked ominously at the small orange blocks that he was supposed to stack at that moment, just because the Dr told him to. And in true Reuben, defiant style, he was having none of it. The Dr asked "Can he put blocks into a bucket?" which made me smile to myself and I thought, well, Reuben, let's show him what you can do and, speaking softly into his left ear, I say "Reuben, can you count the blocks?" (Kristi: we learnt this task from you, with thanks), and Reuben dutifully, because he'll do anything for his mama, starts to count in sign 1, 2, 3, 4, 5..., placing his signing fingers on the little orange blocks in turn before him. "And if you ask me nicely, Dr L, I'll count to 25 in sign for you too?"

"Can you point to the boy's eyes?" continues Dr L and Reuben takes my index finger and points to the boy's eyes in turn.

"What is this?" he says, pointing to a bird, and Reuben takes my fingers and makes the sign for bird.

Can you put the red circle in the hole and Reuben, with a side smirk, tries to put it in the red square hole.

We all laugh of course whilst Reuben is thinking. I can play you too, Dr Loo!

On reflection, I wonder how many typical kids are asked to perform to cues. I truly understand the importance of these assessments, but we do need to give our kids a little bit of creative leverage too...

Wonderful developments in the land of speech

Ah, the shrieks of delight that come from Reuben when he sees speech & language pathologist, Johanne, coming up the garden path and now with his wonderful walking, he helps her out with all her toys and books by donning a backpack for her, courteously signing "thank you" and saying "bye bye" as she walks out the door. He truly loves such routines, all little games in Reuben's eyes. His vocabularly includes words like car, flower, water and his personal favourite, bananananana.

My own way of teaching him speech from what I've picked up over the last 2 years and is in addition to what Reuben learns from Johanne for 2hrs a week at home and at CHLA for 1hr a week, has been to work through some of the great materials such as the Alphabet Song flashcards from Gwen and Kristi and the Youtube Barbara Milne's Alphabet Song which teaches the phonemic (phonetic?) sounds of the alphabet ("Apple, Apple, a a a" etc) and the Leapfront Letter Factory. About a year ago Reuben was signing the words to the song in order (Apple, Baby, Cookie etc) without visual aids and now he's adding the sounds too. One of the ways I've taught him this is to sit with him against me looking into the mirror together. I'll sing the song and stress the alphabet sounds and he'll imitate my exaggerated mouth shapes and sounds. This way he's been able to pick up many complicated speech sounds such as f (which has a distinct mouth movement - just try it!) and c. It's a different approach than what the speech pathologists are doing, but it's complimentary and it ties in with what you would do with a deaf teacher. I remember when working with an earlier oral deaf home teacher, we would work on speech and alphabet sounds but back then when he was 6 months old, Reuben had no vocalisation. And thus I knew signing would be his expressive form of communication for the foreseeable future and with it, decided we would work instead with a signing deaf teacher (Gwen) for the 1hr a week session.

Meanwhile, Reuben continues to take Callum's hands during school circle time (UCLA Early Intervention for 4 mornings a week is not a deaf programme, though our Friday school at Marlton is for deaf and HoH toddlers) and attempts to get him to sign (in vain!).

And wait for this gorgeous little miracle! In the last few days I've I picked up a book and pointed out the words BABY and BANANA or caps or lower case. Of course he's seen these words a 100 times in different books, but when I pointed to the letters, he didn't sign them back this time, but actually used the letter sounds, ie saying "ah" or "buh". This is early reading at its most beautiful. I hope you can understand the importance.

I've not been keen from a personal perspective to teach Reuben words just by sight, but rather, have wanted to teach him phonetics (phonemics?).

What do I mean by this?

Well, if he knows the sounds that letters make, then he can use those rules to combine sounds and thus be able to read any word (when it's spelt phonetically of course which in the English language isn't always the case!) rather than only being able to read words when he knows the complete word. Time enough in the future to learn the irregular sounds.

I feel this highlights the importance of learning sign. Signing gave him such a headstart in language, in learning the alphabet and thus in helping him read as he's doing now. The language was in place. Now he's converting many of his signed words to spoken words.

I know I have some blog readers who are in special ed or are speech pathologists/therapists and I'm always keen to learn more about this area, especially now that his language development is coming on beautifully. I'm just making most of this up as I go along...

Reuben's incredible memory for signs

Windy, clouds - these are words I haven't used (or had to use) since August in the UK and since yesterday was an incredibly windy day so that the garden table parasol finally had to come down, I said the word along with lightning, leaf and other words in our Nature signing vocabularly (Reuben knows every sign I know) and Reuben signed back without hesitation, windy, clouds, lightning, leaf. I find such accurate expression in sign language simply beautiful, most especially since he's not seeing such signs on a daily basis to aid recall, as he would be with other commonly spoken words in a hot desert climate.

Callum's first sign: Milk

8 months, exactly the month when Reuben started signing too, yet he opened with 'bath' and Callum has opened with 'milk'.

It starts a few days ago, and yet I'm not quite sure and need reassurance.

And then tonight at dinner as Callum sits in the highchair next to the dining room table, munching on a little tuna and potato from my plate, about his 7th meal of the day, the impossibly hungry boy, he looks directly at me and signs 'milk' repeatedly and precisely. I'm so excited, I jump up and fetch a bottle from the fridge and return to watch Callum's face light up and continue signing milk, whilst rocking about in ecstasy in his highchair, a huge smile growing across his face and lighting the room, utterly delighted in a special way that he's made his needs known. He looks over to mum and we're absolutely certain now: he's signing milk, at which point we shriek and that's the same point that Dad jumps up excitedly from his computer next to us and shouts ecstatically as Celtic win 2-0 over Moscow in the Champions League football match. Were it not for our own euphoria, Callum would probably start crying at Dad's bellowing voice, but with huge smiles and tears of joy in his direction from Mum and me, he giggles and his striking blue eyes beam with love.

He has Reuben's language.

Reuben's voice!

The most amazing thing has been happening over the last few days. After months of getting Reuben to tolerate first a modified speech valve (PMV) in which we had a tiny hole drilled to release some of the pressure (the valve would go shooting across the room unmodified), then his throat surgery in January to remove a large fibroma and then tolerating his unmodified speech valve but panicking whenever he heard any slight vocalisation, til now finally hearing Reuben's beautiful voice again after nearly 2 years and he just can't stop singing away to us!

I wonder what he's trying to say to Callum, or is he trying to get him to sign by taking his hand. Ah, my sweet, lovely, boys!

Watching Signing Time

OK we don't have TV, but the boys very, very, very occasionally watch Signing Time videos as a treat as Reuben responds much better to one on one teaching with me. Callum is as you can see mightily impressed with the DVD and Reuben's signing along to the numbers (pic 1: signing numbers; pic 2: signing 4).

Reuben thinks "Hey, that's weird. Someone else knows signing too!" And isn't it funny that his lips are saying the last syllable of "4" in the 2nd shoot. A happy little fluke given he can't speak.

I love you too

"Owee", Reuben signs as he crawls around my feet.
"Where is your owee?", I sign and say.
Reuben points to a diminishing little scratch on his hand.
"Mama kiss it better".
Reuben looks up at me again and signs "I love you" with a smile on his face.
"I love you too Reuben", I sign and say.
Bliss.

Reuben's signing at age 2

Updated with a lovelier ending of his "Now I know song..."

PS I must have deleted his actual "A" to you ASL purists out there but the G in his clip looks like a hybrid anyway.

Hope you enjoy the videos as much as I'm enjoying watching them over and again now that Reuben's in bed and I can't see the live action. Note: You'll see when Reuben signs certain letters such as i, j and y, he uses his opposing hand to help formulate the signs since his little right finger is very bent and he doesn't have the full use of it.




I put together a list of Reuben's signs at 24 months for his teachers at the Early Intervention Programme at UCLA to help them better understand him and to encourage his signing beyond the home. Interesting, since I started the list a couple of weeks ago, I've noticed how much more he's signing in public, today at a photographic exhibition at the Getty, yesterday at Sea World, signing away to everyone who wants to see! How lovely the parallels with your speaking children; his method of delivery may be different, but he still has something to say. What a glorious mix here of wild and sea animals, colours, numbers and letters, salutations and emotions, verbs and adjectives! You can click the image if you want to see further. And how happy for Reuben and me that we're learning a whole new and foreign language together, albeit it's pretty tough keeping up with him. No sooner have I learnt the word from a book or ASLpro online than you're asking for more, more, more!

And so dear Reuben, you love to count to 15 in ASL sign and can recognize all your numbers. You arouse the attention of passersby "Is he really signing?". You talk to yourself in any of your 250 expressive signs and like to sign with either hand and sometimes with both hands at the same time. You often sign the alphabet interjecting words beginning with that letter alongside the alphabet letters. You love our game on the alphabet/numbers mat: "Where's the R? the K? the P? the 7?" scowering each letter and number in turn until you find what I've asked for. And sometimes I feel like shouting the old theatrical adage "It's behind you!". Or the reverse of this game where I'll ask you "What letter/number is this Reuben?" You recognise shapes and numbers no matter what their colour, size or shape. You enjoy your beautiful ABCs book from Hannah & Vivian and imagine them reading it together too.

On reflection, Reuben aged 2

“I don’t want to miss a thing”.

Words composed so early on on this blog and now as Reuben has passed his marvellous milestone of 2 years old, I’m reminded of that sentiment once again.

I don't want to blink lest I miss a milestone.

I sometimes look at children in the playground with their nannies and think how it’s working for other families, and yet it’s as far away from what I want for Reuben, Callum and me as I could ever imagine.

I look back to the days spent in the hospital with Reuben, the intensity of it and look at him now and wonder where the time has gone. The answer of course has been an immensely tough journey, at times crucifying painful and seemingly insurmountable, yet still, I regret the times I haven’t been with him. I need Reuben as much as he needs me and though I can't change what is passed, I can still change the future.

I know I need help and that in itself is difficult to accept, help which at first shared the burden of all his medical needs. But I never have needed help to be a mother to him, help in feeling what “cannot be seen or heard nor even touched, but felt in the heart”, only help that allows me to spend as much time as possible with him. Reuben needs time too to be by himself, to explore his environment, to make his own mistakes, to discover his own secret garden, build his own castles, to make believe. And other times he needs to snuggle up with his mama for a nap and feel that unconditional love gush over him. That’s the essence of motherhood for me, what I had growing up, and what I want most to remember and there is nothing in that which I wish to share. Our lives are just too short and as I see my little baby grow so very much and recall oh how I begged for that too, I see a future of his growing self and growing independence, of the times we have together gradually slipping away and think that even in the bleakest of days, we had something quite miraculous and perhaps unique in the seemingly endless days we spent in hospital, just the two of us, when I could do little more than hold you and love you and sing to you and sign to you. Just to feel you in my heart and feel a love so strong it hurt. I regret the fact I had a tough pregnancy with Callum, yet of course there’s nothing I could have done about that, endless sickness, chronic pain, heartburn and disability, but it did take me away from you for a while.

You have a new and sweetest thing, grabbing me by the hair quite forcibly and thrusting your big lips onto mine. Smack! You pull your hearing aid band down over your eyes and then look up through the little slit you’ve left underneath and think it’s funny. Well yes, dear son, it is! You love to open your silent mouth and do a Callum, a big, wide “aaaaaaaaaagggghhhh”. It’s so expressive I can hear the cry! You love to entertain Callum when you both hang out at/in the exersaucer and you mimic Callum’s chewing of the sun and stuffed shapes because deep in your heart, you want to be a baby again and yet your body has grown into that of a toddler’s, with the tiniest of hairs above your lip which I can only see when the light shines through.

On motherhood, I don’t want to do anything anymore just to please anybody else where it is to the detriment of my time with Reuben. I may panic at what I think are a mountain of things to try to achieve with Reuben; learning ASL (a whole different ballgame to having learnt a book full of signs), learning to draw and write, learning to play with other children, learning to eat orally, learning to speak, nay, to vocalize itself, learning to walk independently as the main means of mobility, and still having time, more importantly, to just play. I was always fiercely competitive for myself, but fear of ever being like that with Reuben. There’s a strong cultural difference that team work matters more than personal achievement in Europe and born from this is a British Isles (UK and Ireland) trait that manifests itself in self deprecation, a trait filling the story lines of countless sitcoms. And if I push Reuben, I want to stress, it’s because he wants to be pushed. He will trundle up to me and sign “more signs”. And I know too that physical achievements will not be his strengths, yet if his beautiful mind, a muscle that needs exercising, is stretched and toned, he will be allowed to fulfill his pull potential. And for this reason too I ache at the families who haven’t or are unable to brace the deaf culture (Reuben is moderately-profoundly deaf but hears within a normal range aided) and push a foreign language on them when deafness is in that child’s heart and soul. As alien as it was to me to have to learn sign language when Reuben was 7 days old, I knew so early on that it was his language and that he would hopefully be bilingual in American Sign Language and English. And so now I’m pressed with choices to make as to how I can open up true ASL to him. And if we live in the UK, then BSL (British Sign Language). That decision I had to make early on and when I put those panics aside, I was able to see that really, it didn’t matter whether it was ASL or BSL (ASL incidentally is much more user friendly, signed with one hand predominantly. Very handy when you have a child in the other). Instead, the important thing was to give Reuben access to language and with that skill, that intellectualism born from learning a language, a third (BSL) language would come much more naturally.

And why then would I want to teach Reuben the alphabet and his numbers way before pre-school. A while back I looked at early literacy, but have pretty much avoided working on it because it failed to focus on phonetics. It focused on pushing flashcards rather than how a word is made up. I feel that come the kindergarten years, the children who don’t know their alphabet or how to count will soon catch up. But when you have a child with so many disabilities, allowing them to excel and nurturing what they love best, will give them an early edge. And I think it’s back to the idea of the brain as a muscle, the use it or lose it that’s important and indeed when you see the joy on Reuben’s face at his signing accomplishments, I watch him in the rear view mirror practicing his signs, refining their formation, I know he and I are working to the same goal and we are in harmony. His letters and numbers up to now now fully conquered.

There is no greater gift you can give your child than your presence and your touch and even if the days are so bleak that you are denied that touch in an intensive environment, you can touch with so many other senses. And your heart. It’s like the moon. I’ve always thought that whenever you are far away from a loved one, separated, perhaps on the phone long distance or thinking of them; just know that a mere glance of the moon, looking up at the Sea of Tranquility and asking your loved one to do the same and know that in this fabulous world of ours, it is the same moon; your eyes are looking at the same moon, maybe at the same time, albeit you may be thousands of miles apart. Isn’t that connectivity a lovely thought and a blessed gift from God and Mother Nature!

Saturday 5am now. I’m in with Reuben tonight and whilst there’s a little suctioning to be done, I just can’t sleep, my mind is too restless. So writing is my greatest way to relax. I know I’ll pay for it in the morning which is only about 3 hours away when Callum will need his bottle having slept fitfully through the night and the day will begin again...

Open Day at Marlton

The programme offered from pre-school (3+) will be ASL/English so Reuben will have a bilingual education.

He currently attends UCLA Early Intervention (University College Los Angeles) programme but that will end at age 3 when he enters the pre-school programme. I'm also planning on starting pre-pre school at Marlton once a week so Reuben can start to become immersed in Deaf Culture. It's hard to explain, but basically, it's more than just the American Sign Language, it's the whole world order, grammar, and deaf culture itself. So just as we may embark on learning a foreign language, ASL can be treated the same way and only by immersing in the language can Reuben ever hope to become fluent. Whilst I hang onto that word "yet", in that he cannot speak yet, I hope one day he will be able to vocalise and speak. What an incredibly long journey it will be with speech therapists and how we all work so hard and noone more so than Reuben himself. What little miracles he holds in his signing hands.

A beautiful mind: Reuben signs R-E-U-B-E-N

Signing your name! I don't feel it's something I've focused much on, the letters, yes, you love to sign all the letters of the alphabet, you can read my handwritting when I write the letters and somehow last night when I started to sign your name to you, you signed it back at me all the way through. Thanks Erica for Reuben's nameplate gift at birth, his name framed by teddies, which sits on his bedroom wall. I'm sure that's helped! His teacher Gwen who helps me mostly on a strategic level, which direction to take, which schools etc, made a good point this morning. His glasses have really helped him formulate his signs correctly. No longer will he be the boy whom only Mama can "hear". I can't wait to take him to what we're thinking will be his pre-school (for deaf and hard of hearing but otherwise typical kids) when he's 3 at an open day tomorrow and show the teachers how beautifully, and with his whole heart and soul, he loves to sign.

A beautiful mind: numbers

Reuben's been signing his numbers, 1-10 all weekend, picking them up like a ball and throwing them back at me with gusto and yet I hadn't thought to use prompts, books or shapes, I simply thought to say the numbers. So today I opened up some new magnetic numbers and put them on the white board which PT Carrie bought him for his birthday (more on birthday, photos etc later) and called each of the numbers out to Reuben. A few minutes of this and I then played the "Where is the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?" game, yet each out of sequence, and in response Reuben pointing, itself only a newly learned skill, directly, so assuredly at the correct number each time. Simply beautiful.

Happy Mother's Day (USA)

... to us girls!

And the best present ever is seeing Reuben count 1-10 in ASL today, correctly, beautifully, exactly, signing with his whole heart. Given I only learnt how to do this correctly from my book in the last week, I continue to be amazed at my boy, nay, I'm gobsmacked.

And so I'm mama to two boys now. Well, what d'ya know?

We have a sign for Honey, H and Doggy and Reuben's been signing that all afternoon. I was doing a shoot for our neighbours for their sweet son's baptism and Callum's been using my Canon strap as a teething ring to counter the razor sharp fang that's poking through on the bottom. Alternatively, he uses my chin. A little uncomfy now especially with said fang, but I love it all the same.

And Honey after all found us. It's late and I'm just going to bed, but Honey has decided she doesn't want to sleep in the shed bed we've set up for her and would much rather stand guard outside our back door. With her newly pampered coat and everything else they did at the petstore and vet, her shiny new pink collar and squeeky toys, she sits with utter patience and respect. There is not a winge nor a bark from her to come in, just soulful eyes looking for love. If, as she did on occasion today, manage to sneak in through the back door, I would kindly ask her to scoot (Mama says stay outside Honey) and she would abruptly turn back to the door. A lady, after all, always knows when to leave.

Reuben and his ABCs

Signing D

The letters are on the 3 little window ledges in the playroom as we're teaching Reuben his ABCs (Thank you Hannah! The book is a wonderful teaching tool). As the sun slips down, it shines intensely into the West facing room and I draw the blinds, casting deep shadows on the playroom walls. I hear a rustle behind the blinds and look up to find Reuben searching for the letters that were silhouetted. He retrieves the E and the D and signs D at me in great excitement!

PS I later thought. Good job he loves "D" so much. There are 3 in his surname!

Alphabet mat

The boys are in the playroom. I'm feeding Callum whilst Reuben crawls around on the alphabet mat, the letters on which are no longer in ABC order. I'm looking at Reuben because somehow I know something marvellous is going to happen. I watch as he stops at X on the mat which he recognises from the Alphabet Song flashcards. He looks up at me to make sure I'm looking, taps the X and signs "Xray". He shuffles over to V and signs "Vacuum". He looks up at me and signs the words Apple through to Zebra.

Flowery dress

I have the boys lying side by side on the bed, changing each of them. Reuben signs Flower and I'm not sure why and then taps on my dress 3 times. I look down and see the Zara dress I'd thrown on his morning, a dress I've been wearing for years and never give a thought to, covered in abstract cream flowers against a beige background.

More sequencing

Today Reuben sits on my lap and starts his sequencing of the Alphabet Song in sign without prompts, words, pictures or otherwise from me. He starts with Cookie and goes all the way through to Zebra and then, realising he missed out Apple and Baby at the start, finishes with those 2 words.

Cookie - Dolly - Elbow - Flower - Garden - Hammer - Igloo - Jam - Kitten - Lion - Monkey - Nose - Ostrich - Pumpkin - Quarter - Rabbit - Scissors - Tiger - Undershirt - Vacuum - Window - Xray - Yo-Yo - Zebra - Apple - Baby

Reuben is becoming brilliant at sequencing so I decided to find out more. The reason why he loves the flashcards moving at speed (which I thought was just our little game), is actually because information presented at speed is more easily apprehended by the right hemisphere of the brain and, unlike left-brain memorization, which requires conscious, directed effort, right-brain learning is unconscious and effortless. And, since babies learn at a much faster pace than adults, in order to keep Reuben's attention, I need to move quickly through the cards.

Callum must be picking up so much too during all of this, his big blue eyes on his little round bobbing face transfixed on Reuben.

Jam

A simple, single word.

It's also the first word Reuben has ever read.

I turn the little alphabet cards over so instead of seeing the picture, I see the word and only then do I present them to Reuben. In a group of a few cards including Dog, Cat, Jam, he sometimes signs Dog from seeing that word, but always signs Jam. I leave it for an hour or so and come back to the same challenge and, sure enough, he signs Jam. Signing is Reuben's voice and so by signing words he sees, he is recognising/reading those words.

I found this quote:

"Children begin to learn to read before they are even able to recognize a single letter."

I'm so very interested now in learning about early reading and how it will help Reuben's communication skills which is the area I mostly focus on. That said, what I do know is that combining words with pictures is going to help him learn to read better as he'll thus have greater visual clues than the simplicity of black words on white can offer. So that's what we'll continue to do. Words with pictures stimulating signs.

It's another wonderful milestone in a miraculous week.