My granddaughter is so smart, she can ignore me in two languages.
My husband and I are both disabled. When we take care of our grandchildren (Bean, f age 3, Spud m age 2, Seed m age unborn due late June), it's imperative that the ambulatory ones learn to come back to us when called. We live near a parking lot, and our apartment building's commons are part of a short cut between the tourist cabins and downtown. Cars, strangers, unleashed dogs, older kids who can be careless.
Bean and Spud are learning bits of ASL and have been since they were babies. (Thank you, Ms. Rachel.) Their Mom and I sign to them as best we know. They don't quite have the manual dexterity for some signs but they do understand the signs we've used with them.
Today, Bean ran off and the husband and I called to her to come back to us. She put her hands over her ears so she couldn't hear us then firmly turned her back to us so she couldn't see us sign to her.
I'm flummoxed. I know what would have happened if I'd done anything of the sort. My ass hurts just thinking about it. But we're learning alternative means of discipline when it comes to this generation. We just don't know how to handle this new misbehavior. It has to be nipped quickly because it's a safety issue.
(It doesn't help that the flick of her curly golden pigtails, her little pout, and the flounce of her skirt as she turned was fucking adorable.)
















