We are here in the middle of some yucky sick days and there is really no better time to share with you guys my love & adoration for the PBS show Signing Time.  Albeit annoying as hell, (but really, what kid shows aren’t?) I honestly look at it as something that has saved my life on multiple occasions.  And most of those occasions are sick days.

As you may already know, Stevie is the un-entertainable child.  He has recently started to play with cars, but before that, there was nothing.  Not a toy on God’s green earth that would keep his interest longer than 30 seconds.  A bedroom full of beeps and bleeps and lights and blocks and legos and letters and puzzles and trains and balls and music.  I mean, you name it, we have tried it.  He just doesn’t quite get the fascination.

So you can only imagine a friggin sick day.  He wouldn’t watch TV, wouldn’t play with toys, wouldn’t cuddle, had the incessant need to go “BYEEEEEE” and by 11am, I’d be on the verge of tears, frustrated and helpless. Not knowing how we were going to make it to night fall.

Several months ago, I had a couple recommendations to check out Signing Time.  On the website, they sell DVDs that are quite expensive, but the show also plays on PBS at the butt crack of dawn.  So I scheduled it to record and for a few weeks, I would just put on an episode here and there to see how Stevie liked it.  Mostly it would play in the background while we did other things, until one day, I caught him actually watching.  And each time he watched, he could get through a little more.  And then all of a sudden, he was asking for the show!  And then started trying some of the signs!!  I was floored – amazed that this was the show he liked. Animation and cartoons might as well be a historical documentary to him, in terms of boredom, but Signing Time he could get on board with.  I started to let him watch an episode (or 2)  every single day because I really felt like it was helping him.  Even I inadvertently started learning the signs, because she explains them in such a way that they are easy to remember.  I practice with him all the time now. We have 24 episodes saved on the DVR and we cycle through those suckers like nobody’s biz.  Especially on sick days.

So while sick days are still no fun and rather difficult for him to understand – Why can’t I go outside when my temperature is 102???  Waaaaahhhhhhh!!!! – this show has made them just a little bit more bearable.  By the end of the day, I am still on the verge of jumping out the window, and hearing the Signing Time songs on repeat doesn’t help.  But at least we are making it to the end of the day without any major breakdowns (from him or me).  Let the countdown to 7pm begin!