Little Boy Tadpoles

Communicating with a daughter who is deaf can be particularly challenging, especially because my signing skills are not at her level I have always said, however, that I have enough signs for her to understand what I am saying.

For instance:
Marie loves camouflage shirts, pants and sweatshirts. One day she asked me why the clothing looked like leaves, and I told her it was made that way so people could hide in trees in the woods to shoot deer or other animals. As expected, her mouth opened wide and the surprise showed in her glinting blue eyes. SHOOT an animal? She would never do that! She thought for a minute and then told me she was going to say the leave shirt is for playing hide and seek in the woods and no one could find her. I tend to think they might be looking for her for a very long time…

Another time I had difficulty explaining things was when we were talking about sex. She wanted to know how women get pregnant. She knows about the mechanics of “sex”, (she was abused for years.) What she couldn’t understand was how the woman got pregnant. So, in my best non-professional way, (and I will skip over the highly graphic part) I told her that the male has tiny tadpoles which he shoots up to meet the females tiny eggs, then the two would get together and a baby would develop. Tiny tadpoles, huh? She looked at me quizzically. Tiny eggs? After a minute or two, she shrugged and accepted my explanation. However, when she was fishing recently in our backyard, she saw some tadpoles. And caught them. To give to a boy who might not have any…

To read about Marie’s traumatic early years with us, please purchase my book, The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids with Disabilities and Remaining Sane on Amazon.