Hi there, my name is Autumn Harrison. When I was in elementary school I had my first encounter with American Sign Language and fell in love with its beauty right away. I would spend my entire lunch hour sitting with the special education students, helping them in any way that I could. As I played, fed, read to, and interacted with these beautiful children I learned how to communicate with some of them through ASL. As I got older, my love for the language intensified.
I married my best friend in April 2005 and we have 3 beautiful children. While my husband and I were dating, I taught him basic signs and how to fingerspell. When we welcomed our son into the world in March 2008 we knew that we would teach him ASL from the very start. When he was 7months old he signed ‘milk’ and over the next few months his vocabulary of signs exploded. At 2 years old he knew well over 100signs and relied on ASL about 90% of the time to communicate his wants and needs with us. My daughter, born November 2009, signed her first sign around 6 months and, like her brother, her first sign was 'milk'. From there her signs exploded and by the time she was 2 years old she was asking questions in ASL and instead of hearing the dreaded why's all day, she would walk up to me and tap my leg or say mama and then sign 'why' after each explanation I presented to her. It was very amusing. My 2nd daughter was born September 2012 and around 4m she started to imitate the sign for "milk". 2 days after she turned 6m old she signed "milk" while staring at her hands and squealed in delight as she made the connection! It has been a joy to watch all of my own children learn and discover the benefit and fun that can be had while learning ASL
I came across Signing Time! in December 2008 and was hooked from the moment I watched my first episode. We started watching Baby Signing Time! with my son around this time, he was 9months old, and he already knew a handful of signs, but upon watching the DVD’s his signing vocabulary increased and I was in awe!
I have seen the benefits of teaching young children Sign Language and Rachel Coleman, and the Signing Time! team has made it easy, fun, and entertaining as well. My children have no clue they are learning a language as we play, sing and dance along to the Baby Signing Time! DVDs. I pray that you will come to love ASL through Signing Time! It has been such a blessing to my family, and I pray that you too will be Blessed By Signing!
