ASL

But the highlight of our VBS experience this year was Ellis had his first personal ASL interpreter that the church hired for him. It was like night and day for him. He was excited, engaged.

Today Chris and I were on our first parent panel. We were asked to come to a regional meeting that the State Dept of Ed sponsors for those who are service providers for children with hearing loss. There were people in the room from all over eastern Pennsylvania.

In a week, Ellis will begin his first experience having a personal ASL interpreter in a hearing setting. He will just barely five years old. He has been in great situations thus far. At school, he has full access to communication, because he goes to a Deaf school. At home, we do our best to also provide as full access as we can. And we, his parents, bridge the gap as best we can in other situations, such as extended family or church.

So why three parts? Because I had more thoughts than I had time at a time to write. And because what I wanted to say falls roughly into three points: background, what's going on now, and the obligatory abstract reflections.

Incidentally, this is Christopher writing.

In a previous post I talked about our difficulties finding an interpreter for church, and I mentioned some of the reasons why we think it's important to have one. Let me just say: thank God for the men in our church. Here's why.

We recently changed churches. When we moved from the 'burbs to the city we were much closer to another church in the same denomination. So it seemed to make sense to make a move. We were worried about what would happen with all the work we'd done with our session, but decided to at least visit the closer church to say 'hi, we're in the neighborhood.'

I guess I spoke to soon.

I made some inquiries about including ASL in Ellis's IEP evals, thinking that it had been overlooked. Or just didn't really exist. When we were preparing his 3yo transition to preschool evals, my understanding was that there were not official rubrics for evaluating ASL for an IEP (which seemed weird to me). Maybe it was my county at the time, not providing space for such a thing to exist. For some reason, I though this wasn't going to be included.

'Tis the season for IEPs. And Ellis is getting ready to transition to kindergarten next year.

No, that is not my baby going to kindergarten!!

We all have them. The ornaments we made in school when we were little kids. I think mine was made of pipe cleaners and beads; it was supposed to be a wreath.

Ellis came home with probably the best school ornament ever. The ILY glove--a little handing signing "i love you." Yes, it is proudly displayed on my tree!