Now I’ll be the first to admit that something this significant requires equally significant evidence to convince me this is really happening, but there’s at least something interesting going on here.
J-Man has a picture book – one of those baby-oriented ones with one picture per page. Over time, he’s enjoyed looking at these sorts of books off and on, though not much lately and not really taking any initiative to point out pictures and tell us about them. A couple of days ago, though, he picked up an old favorite that’s been ignored for many months and started telling us about the pictures, which of course we think is great. Then we noticed something he’s never done before.
He started pointing to some of the words rather than the pictures and then saying the word for it. Now admittedly he has the visual cue of the picture right above it, so this might not mean anything beyond identifying pictures, though that in and of itself is a cause for celebration especially since he’s intentionally looking at us to share that experience with him.
Then this evening he was watching Signing Time (bow when you read that), specifically the episode about food. This isn’t one he watches that much, though it’s all relative since we’ve seen every episode lots of times (some many times more than that). The sign for ‘cook’ came on, Rachel talked about it, then he said his word approximation for ‘cook’, and then Rachel and the gang did their thing about that.
Then, the next word flashed up – ‘kitchen’ – and before anybody on the show said a word or did anything, J-Man said something that sounded for sure like he was trying to say ‘kitchen’. Now this could be him memorizing the show, but really this is one we haven’t watched that much and I don’t recall us having watched it in a while.
Still, we know that J-Man has a great memory for books and songs. But his ability to identify letters both on their own and on many occasions within whole words (e.g., point to the ‘a’ in ‘balloon’) is also very good. So, the jury will remain out on this. Mary and I wondered about this word recognition possibility independently, which usually means something around here.
All that said, I can’t recall a time when he’s preemptively said a word before Rachel does on the show. He’s more either a try-to-repeat-after-you-say-it talker or a will-fill-in-the-word-if-you-give-me-many-seconds talker (or he’s just passively watching it and not talking at all). Being this quick to a word with no cue other than the word on the screen and the word before it is something new.
So, who knows. Whatever it is, his speech, his ability to more readily get word approximations out, and his willingness and ability to initiate some speech to express his needs or just to say something interesting have all been showing great improvement lately. However it’s happening, we’ll take it!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
It IS VERY possible that he is reading.
We have heard this quite a bit from Signing Time Families, that their children have very early reading skills, almost a little freaky early
The Today Show recently did a story on one of our ST! fans, Elizabeth Barrett – I spent some time reading with her too when she came out for the filming of Baby Signing Time. Check out my November 7th blog post “Meet Elizabeth” -
~Rachel Coleman
Rachel!
(The rest of you need to take a moment and bow your heads in reverence to THE Rachel. We’ll wait.)
We’re so excited to receive your comment on our blog. I nearly fell down the stairs running to tell Mary. We are practically the First Church of Signing Time around here and are honored you stopped by.
I went and read your post about Elizabeth (and half the rest of your blog) and was blown away. Wow! Y’all reading this – go read it! (http://www.signingtime.com/rachel/2008/11/07/meet-elizabeth/) I am – no pun intended – speechless. What an amazing story.
On my list for tomorrow – find the word flash cards (great ones we found with just the word in big, black print – no pictures or other distractions) and start trying to discover even more of what’s going on in that wonderful mind of his. He is so speech delayed and seems to lack the motor planning needed to sign more than a small number of signs that it’s hard to really understand what all he knows, though we’ve suspected for a long time that he knows much, much more than is outwardly apparent.
Even though he can’t seem to assemble the various steps and signals in his body that he needs to move his hands and sign, you can tell he really wants to, and you can tell how much he gets – both in learning and in joy – from your show. For much of his life, you’ve been second in line only to Mommy in his Favorite Women in the World list. As soon as the show’s intro starts, you can hear him running from across the house like stampeding elephants to come watch.
Also, may you be forever blessed for your CDs. They got us through many, many a day by transforming a very, very upset little boy into a happier – or at least much calmer – one. Plus, we love them too for their positive message about all children, a message that helped us keep our perspective during some rough times. It took about 50 listens to not bust out in tears when we listened to “Caterpillar Dreams”. And “Shine” is practically our anthem.
BTW – he’s started being able to get an ‘r’ sound out on occasion again. How did I get him to do it?
“Can you say ‘Rachel’?”
“Urr.”
“Rayyyy-”
“ul-ul!”
“Rachel!”
So, you’re more or less “Urr-ul-ul” now. Hope you like your new name! He so adores you.
He also got really excited when he made a new friend here named Alex. He knew how to say his name! (or at least his approximation for it “ah-eh”) Leah is a lot harder for him, but he’s been working hard on the ‘L’ sound lately, so it’s only a matter of time!
We wish you could be back on TV, but we completely understand the situation. We own pretty much all the DVDs, but we still miss you on Saturday mornings. I still think if you called on the troops/followers/devoted parents/believers – or had someone do it on your behalf – to help do some fundraising to get ST back on TV, we’d do it. Count us in!
For every one person who e-mails you, there must be hundreds more of us whose lives have been touched in such powerful ways that we couldn’t even begin to tell you. And those of us who work to make a positive impact in our own communities hope we can do that even a fraction as well as you have for families all over the world.
If you’re a parent reading this and wondering, “What is this Signing Time he’s carrying on about?” then you need to stop reading and go directly to SigningTime.com and start buying DVDs. They should be required in every house!
Thanks again, Rachel, for everything you do. Our regards to your family and the entire Signing Time tribe!
Now I am practically speechless! Thank you for the acknowledgement and love!
Leah was reading by age two and I chalked it up to the fact that we…
1. relied on fingerspelling for many words that had no signs and for family members’ names
2. labelled the entire house with index cards so that Leah knew each item not only had a sign, but a written word attached to that item and sign.
On many occasions at age 2, Leah would ask us what a word was, she asked by fingerspelling a written word she had seen… one time we were driving and she asked (by fingerspelling) what does L-E-A-S-E mean? She had noticed a building that said “For Lease” –
I was stunned, what 2 year-old could have even asked that question if they had seen a FOR LEASE sign? Let alone a deaf 2 year-old? Most 2 year-olds would have had to voice or write down those letters to ask and I know few could write or voice those letters at all. Leah had the language in her hands, at her fingertips. (literally)
Signing gives your child more access to information, reading and levels of communication earlier than what is typically available to them without signs.
It has been a marvel to watch the impact of signs in Leah’s life, Alex’s and especially Lucy’s.
I love reading of the impact here on the blogosphere, families like yours who marvel too and have no idea I am reading over your shoulder… smiling.
~Rachel (Urr-ul-ul) Coleman
http://www.signingtime.com/rachel
well, that made me cry…
Rachel,
I remember seeing the video clips of ‘early Leah’ and was wowed by how well she could sign that young. Interesting idea about labeling everything in the house. I wonder whether we should try that?
I know I said before that our son doesn’t (or can’t seem to) really sign, and then he signed ‘hat’ yesterday. Go figure, though that one doesn’t require much precise movement. I think it’s the lack of finer finger dexterity and/or having trouble coordinating arms/hands and/or problems sequencing more than one movement (e.g., snap/pat for ‘dog’, though not a great example since you don’t have to do both but you get the point) that has been problematic. We never have quite figured this out. It seems like there has to be some reason for his difficulties with this, but we haven’t unlocked the mystery yet.
The interesting thing is that he used to – and still sometimes does – grab our hands and move them to make a sign. Like for ‘all done’ (for which we sweep our arms horizontally like ’safe’ in baseball because shaking the hands looks like stimming) he used to grab our hands and sweep them outward instead of using his own arms and hands. Apparently this is reasonably common with some autistic kids, though it doesn’t seem like anyone knows why this happens. I know some autistic kids who sign like crazy. Of course, if you get 10 autistic kids in a room, they’ll all be different. One of the great mysteries.
Our son has always struggled with following sequences of instructions, which isn’t at all unusual for autistic kids. I guess since learning that sequencing is part of learning sign, that’s where we’ve been hitting some wall. I’d almost bet the house, though, that he probably can match signs and words in his head but just hasn’t figured out how to communicate it outwardly yet. We think that’s probably the case about a lot of things.
You mentioned Lucy, which reminded me that I wanted to say that it was her in the “Caterpillar Dreams” video that gets us all emotional, especially that shot with her and that boy cheek-to-cheek. That was so adorable we couldn’t stand it.
She’s a total ray of sunshine.
Read over our shoulders all you want!
Seriously, if you all decide to something like a capital campaign for the foundation or however you have that structured, put out the word and the Signing Time faithful will answer!