The Secret Family Sign

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We have lots of rules here at Team Babetz and one that ranks pretty high is being kind to your brothers and sisters.  Now I know all kids fight.  You can't have this many bodies in this tight of a space without running into a problem here and there.  But the funny thing is that we weren't running into the problem here.  It was at school.

My girls would see their older brother and be so excited. Well you can imagine his reaction to their... warm greetings.  Early on, when we had a 1st grader and a K5er, they would walk into school hand in hand(those were the years we didn't have a camera and I hate that the picture of that is only in my mind).  But as they got older that was just - not - cool.

I don't care so much for being cool but I did understand that it was embarrassing to him for the girls to draw attention.  He's not big on attention... kind of likes to blend in.

So we've had to talk to the girls about toning down their excitement and not embarrassing him, and we had to talk to him about not ignoring them when they did see him in the hall or at lunch.  

Things got better for a couple of years, but now he's a patrol, working car line, and the girls would be upset if he didn't respond to them when 'on the job'.  So we had a team meeting and came up with the idea of a sign we could give each other  that would be secret... only for our family.  They love the secret idea... lends an element of excitement to it I guess.  We looked on a sign language web site and came up with a very modest (as in doesn't draw attention) sign that is meaningful.

{I'd show y'all the sign but then, ya know, I'd have to kill you...} 


The kids have really bought into it.  They give a little side grin and eyebrow raise along with the sign.  HeeHee

And that's what counts... and what works for us... A secret family sign.