Switched at Birth - American Sign Language

I canceled my cable subscription over a year ago saving me over $1000. I subscribed to Netflix for $7.99 per month and later Hulu for $7.99 per month. Most of my television viewing is from those channels via my Roku box.  With Roku I can subscribe to free channel as well as channels with paid subscriptions. I occasionally watch channel 2 via my antennae since it is the clearest channel.

With Netflix, I tend to watch television in bulk. I consume back to back episodes of series. During my LOST phase I watched whenever I was home, I was so focused on the cast getting off the island.

This summer we were glued to the series Heroes. We watched all of season one. My son said his two favorite things about summer were the trips and watching Heroes. We were entranced.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching television series on ABC and ABC family programs and movies. Pretty Little Liars, Revenge and Switch at Birth are some of the series.

I recently started to watch Switch at Birth on Netflix. The two main characters are teenagers who were switched at the hospital after they were born and given to the wrong families. One of the twins is deaf.

During the course of the show, the characters do American Sign Language. The main character speaks and signs but some of the supporting casts' members do not speak so there are captions.

 My daughter and I (my son doesn't watch it with us) spend a lot of time reading subtitles. My daughter started saying that she wanted to learn sign language.

My daughter sometimes says things and miraculously, it happens.

The day after she made that statement, I went to pick her up from her after-school program.  The program is a free program though the NYC parks department.  One of the staff members from approached me to see if I want my kids to participate in free sign language classes during the after school program on Fridays. Hmmm, why yes, of course.

So for 30 minutes every Friday, they will get to learn a new language and also get an understanding of how people with different abilities communicate. Imagine the strength and coordination that it takes to use your hands to communicate all day. 

This is another wonderful opportunity to expose my kids to something new and positive.  And to make it better, it is free.

ExposureMom