"Firsts!"

Our children's "Firsts" are so exciting to experience!  Their first bite of food, their first steps, first tooth, first word, first..........   As parents we all experience those firsts.  Then we have those "other" firsts. You know, the ones that mean something only to us. The ones no one else understands and maybe even think are little bit silly.  Today was one of those "other" firsts.  And for us, this first was important and will go down in history forever. 

A couple weeks ago on Saturday morning our family prepared for General conference. This is a semi-annual event in our home. We stay home and through the wonderful advances of technology, we listen to, or watch, the leaders of our church offer guidance, encouragement, and inspiration. We had been talking about it for a few days, reminding the children that church was at home for the weekend. That morning, the children woke up, had their breakfast, gathered their homework given to them in primary the week before and went down stairs. All of them but, our 6 year old. She headed up stairs. My husband and  I figured she would be down momentarily and we followed the others to the family room. Sure enough, a few minutes later she came down the stairs, her arms full, with daddy's laptop. He asked her what she was doing with his laptop, and started to explain why we don't touch daddy's laptop. Without waiting for him to finish and with a very serious expression on her face, she responded, "We are watching conference. I need the interpreter! I don't understand them, they are talking. I need that (laptop) to watch the interpreter for church!

We were in awe! She is 6 years old. Typically we do everything to in our power to ensure her participation in things. We leave the captioning on, attend church with a deaf congregation, interpret for her when needed or hire interpreters. She attends a deaf school and has play dates as often as she wants with her school peers. We also attend as many deaf community events as we can.

On this particular day, knowing her 6 year old self would not pay a lot of attention, we decided to let the interpreter go, and just watch with the caption. We will never take that attitude again! This is one of those firsts.  The ones that make us sit back and smile.  She is advocating for herself, and it was wonderful!