I never in my life thought an ABC Family teen drama would have such an impact on my life. I don’t even want to admit it, but the show has been truly instrumental in my ability to sign. Sometimes I dismiss the role sign language has in my life because SJ is in such a grey area when it comes to language, but the fact is even though we aren’t fluent we sign out of necessity every single day. It’s been interesting to watch her learn to talk. She understands and can identify all the parts of her face now. She says (or tries to say) up, down, where, open, outside, no, shoes, I want, and today for the first time I got to hear say bye-bye as she waved to her teacher! She has said it before, but this time was on her own. She initiated the goodbyes!

The other cool thing is that because the concept of vocabulary is starting to click more than ever, she is  starting to use ASL more too. It’s not what I expected, but She has started having a new sign explosion. She has signed sit, swing, swim, wrong, yes, asleep, bed, trash and a few others without any encouragement. It’s strange to see her doing a sign for the first time that we haven’t used since last year. Like I said, my theory is that as she learns orally all the pieces are starting to come together and make more sense, plus she is maturing in other ways of course. I am glad to have Switched at Birth back on so that I can  brush up on the signs that have gotten rusty.

Another area of my life that Switched at Birth has shed some light on is my ear problem. I couldn’t believe when I read a comment on my blog post about Meniere’s disease that the lead character Daphne has it too! I knew she had some kind of mild fluctuating hearing loss, but I had no idea we had the same thing. And in case you’ve seen the show, her deaf accent is acting, she doesn’t sound anything like that in real life.  When I first read about this condition I knew there was somewhere I had heard of this before, and it turns out they implemented it on the show. The character Noah is supposed to have Meniere’s. They talk about it in this clip, but they make it sound more severe than what is typical with this disease.

The Switched at Birth season premiere came at just right time for me. I usually only keep up with one show (if that) and Call the Midwife just had their season finale. My entertainment choices say a lot about my interest; home birth and hearing loss. Okay maybe they just say a lot about how weird I am, or unique. Let’s call it unique.