Deaf Mentor

[Gwendolyn]

Holy Crap she is fantastic!! We had our first full meeting with her last night. After an hour and a half I was exhausted!! She's hard of hearing, but she is not allowed to talk. I was pretty impressed with myself, I must say. We communicated pretty well. I was suprised with how much I had already learned. I did find out that the sign we had been using for "soda" had sexual content...oops

DH also did well. He can be uncomfortable with others coming into his home space, but he began to warm up and started getting the hang of it. I spent a good part of the evening translating and then she told me I had to be quiet and make DH figure it out. He did not like feeling so out of touch, but jumped in there.

DS wasn't much about it this week, but we are going to the park next week and hopefully he will be more into it. We will also be tested On all of the signs we learned...easily 25+

Good for you! For BOTH of you. It sounds like she will be a fantastic resource.

Gee - what is that soda sign?? I'd better make sure I'm not using it w/the little girl down the street. So far I've just stuck with the sign for "drink".

That is great! She sounds like such an asset to have in learning to sign.

I hope the test goes well. I'll be the playground makes a big difference. Is he learning sign for preschool next year?

[Gwendolyn]

He will be in a early childhood ed program next year. We had to make a tough decision between the sign language school and the oral language school (which does not do sign). We decided to go with the oral language school feeling that is the most critical component at this point. So, for us, this mentorship program will be our sign education component over the next few years. My thought was that we could blend the two at home. Our big drama right now is trying to get DS into the school.