Signing hurt and help: part 1

Part 1: Hurt
As family and friends know, we've been using ASL signs with Otter for almost a year now. Now he seems to be learning them almost faster than we can look them up to show him.

Two of the ones my workshop teacher highly recommended were 'HURT' and 'HELP'. over the past month, he's learned how to make 'HURT', usually when he falls down, accompanied by a fairly accurate imitation of Mama's melodramatic "Owww," the one I used to try to help him learn hurt. The good thing about the "Owww" is that it should be recognizable to people even if they don't recognize the 'HURT' sign he does with it, tapping the tips of his two index fingers together. Ideally, he needs to learn to do this sign next to the area he's hurt.

The bad thing about the "Owww" is that it's probably among the funniest sounds he makes. It's a highpitched cute little sound that makes me want to laugh, which is not so kind when your child is hurting. He accompanies it with an inquisitive look and intently holds your gaze to see if you understand, and then repeats the sound and the sign, over and over (as I did when I was trying to teach him).

Now he's experimenting to test the limits of where and how his signs and words apply, and to test out his ability to communicate with us. So today he fell down, and absoltuely did not hurt himself in any significant way. Nonetheless he made the "Owww" and the 'HURT' sign repeatedly, seeming to enjoy both the pretending and the resulting conversation we had where I said "yes, Otter fell down; do you hurt?" checked each part of him and asked "does your elbow hurt? your butt?" and so on.

It's so weird and cool to be able to have conversations now with him. I can tell he's pretty psyched about it too, as he walked around the living room today signing 'DVD' 'ALL DONE' and saying "D done" after I turned off the Wiggles. Okay, his version of the DVD letter spelled sign is a somewhat garbled looking clenching of his fist and wiggling his fingers randomly, but it's clear what he means. I would respond, "Yes, all done" and do the 'ALL DONE' sign, and then we'd start the conversation over again.

I didn't say they were complicated conversations.