Blended Families and Special Needs: Sign Language to the Rescue

by Ronnie, a Groom-to-Be

You’ve probably heard of mixed or blended families before. A woman with a child or children marries a man with a child or children – think The Brady Bunch. My situation is a little like that. I’m about to marry for the second time, and I have a son, Martin, who is three. My bride-to-be, Lorraine, has two daughters, ages 6 and 9. The younger, Kim, is deaf.

Preparing for the wedding is stressful enough: there’s the event planning, the tuxedo, and the rest of the groomly responsibilities, but there’s another dimension to our future happiness: my son needs to be able to communicate with his soon-to-be sister. The girls have a head start on him with sign language, but I figured Martin would have to be older to start learning it. He’s pretty good with his hands, but he just turned three, and isn’t as dextrous as he’ll be a year or two from now. Lorraine and I have been together for almost a year, and in that time, Martin has spent time with Kim, but not enough to really communicate fluently with her.

Little did I know that there’s an answer to my little dilemma – baby sign language on DVD. Yep, baby sign language, for real. Kids as young as ten months to a year can begin learning sign language! Lorraine sat me down with a set of DVDs called Signing Time. There are 34 DVDs in this set, a few books and some CDs, and apparently it covers just about everything you need to know about sign language for kids. I say ‘apparently’ because we haven’t watched them all yet – they’re packed. The amazing thing is that Martin is really picking it up! After just a month or two, he had several basic signs memorized – things like milk, more, thank you and sleep.

Given a few more months, maybe a year, Martin will be pretty much fluent in sign language for his age. Between these incredible DVDs and spending more time with Kim, he’ll have a second language mastered by the time he’s in Kindergarten. Tell me we don’t live in amazing times.

Okay, so we’ve got that going for us. Now I just need to figure out what my guys are going to get for groomsmen gifts! And rent the tux. And arrange the limo. And sign off on the cake. And the venue.

Hey, can we just go to a Justice of the Peace, hon?