Joseph Garcia AWP Final Fri, 8/7 11:49AM 1:00:53 SUMMARY KEYWORDS people, sign language, sign, families, book, baby, void, world, dads, child, life, work, signing, called, deaf, learn, words, joseph, products, parents SPEAKERS Paul Zelizer, Dr. Joseph Garcia P Paul Zelizer 00:05 Hi, this is Paul Zelizer and welcome to another episode of The aware Peters podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. Each episode I do a deep dive interview the thought theater in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience is already transforming a special guest to you today and topic super excited about it. Before I introduce him, I'd like to just ask if you could go to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a ratings subscribe to a review, it helps tremendously. Thanks for considering. Today I'm thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Joseph Garcia. Our topic today is supporting diverse families with baby sign language. Yes, you heard that right. Dr. Joseph Garcia is the grandfather of baby sign language. He's one of the world's leading experts. He's worked with over 5000 families Community Hospital and National Education Program. He's written seven, several best selling books and curriculums on the topic, including the well known sign with your baby in 19. Navy. Joseph also has had a big impact on my personal family. We heard about this work with my daughter who's about to turn 20. When the show goes live, we did it with her. So we're talking quite a few years ago, and it had a tremendous impact on our family. She had vocabulary of 120 signs, literally 120 words before she could say a verbal word and open the communication, our sense of connection. She's an honor student and nationally known program has done incredibly well academically. In Dr. Joseph, you've had an incredible impact in my personal family in my life. It is such an honor to have you on this show. Joseph Garcia AWP Final Page 1 of 21 Transcribed by https://otter.ai D Dr. Joseph Garcia 01:52 Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here with you and I must admit and confess that every time that my son made a soccer goal Did anything great in his life? I would always say it's because he signed when he was a baby I still P Paul Zelizer 02:04 flasher the I Love You sign 20 years. Yes, I hear you. So we're going to get into designing with your baby and diverse families and what the heck are you people thought we'll get there. But just before we do that we're called the we're printers. We'd like to get to know somebody a little bit in this way asking about a wellness or an awareness practice that you personally do Joseph to help resource yourself and stay resilient. You've been doing this work for a long time, what helps you stay resilient and show up with enthusiasm even when you've dealt with some pretty hard issues over the course of your career? D Dr. Joseph Garcia 02:43 Well, you know, I, I think just the the, the thirst for life and the and the hunger for new things and to grow and to learn each day is really kind of something that that's it's always been inside of me. So I like to learn music and do things And you know, ski and snowboard and I can, you know, stay active and learn to speak new languages from time to time and just do things to keep my brain active and to keep my body active and keep going, you know, as long as I can. P Paul Zelizer 03:21 This is a more professionally oriented podcast and but we can't divorce the person from the context that they grew up in and came of age and you to understand how you get even came up with the idea of teaching baby sign language. I think it's helpful to share a little bit about your personal journey where you grew up and growing up in a place where you look different than a lot of the people around you and some learning challenges you face all of that combined to kind of like set you it wasn't easy, but it kind of set you up to think of this body of work that is incredibly innovative. tell our listeners a little bit About how did your personal experience contribute to this body where? D Dr. Joseph Garcia 04:04 Well, you know, it's a really complex world because I'm, I'm a Heinz 57. First of all, my name is Garcia, Susan spaniel, last name, but I'm not Hispanic, I'm African American, Joseph Garcia AWP Final Page 2 of 21 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Native American and Caucasian sort of a Heinz 57 combination of things. And Wisconsin, they call us an other, you have either a black white or other on your license application. So I've been in other most of my life, I was the only person of color my old school. So I was always, you know, kind of the outcast or the odd person. So I kind of I also was a really terrible stutterer. So I couldn't talk very much. And I was put in the back of the classroom with the, you know, kids who were kind of making it but it was a parochial school. So one of the people in the back of the classroom or the back of the bus, as we used to call it background. We're talking back in the 50s now, so a lot of racism going on back in the day. Those days, there was a deaf child too, because there was no special education programs. So the we were in a parochial school, a Catholic school with nuns, and they put all this special kids in the back. So the deaf child was next to me and I was always you became friends. And we tried to sign with them as best we could play little finger games with them. But I think that had an impact on me because when I grew older, I never had a fear of sign language or the deaf. I had a curiosity, and maybe that's what helps. So I met some deaf people. When I became older when I was getting ready. It was in the military get ready to go overseas, in 1970, actually, and they befriended me some deaf people in Houston, Texas, actually, and they were on a deaf reunion. I tried to sign with them a little bit, but I remembered from being you know, first, second, third grade, so it just kind of rekindled that desire to sign and when I did start to Learn more sign and start to associate with my deaf friends. I noticed that their babies were communicating and sign long before traditionally developing hearing babies were learning to speak. And as a result, that's kind of what kind of ignited that and the fact that I was also got a chance to become friends with the signing chimpanzees and I had a dog sled team in Alaska that you signed with and I had a lot of signing experiences that led me to see how important sign communication could be a benefit and value to my life. But when it came to having my own children, and I started to sign with them, and they had vocabularies of 150 200 words before they could speak their first word, you know, that is what really sort of is a toasted my bread. P Paul Zelizer 06:50 It's pretty wild. I remember the first time we ran into a friend who think thing, you know, 18 month old, had about 180 you know, word vocabulary. could barely speak verbally, it blew my I had no reference point. And I had a master's degree in psychology, no reference point whatsoever. Even the thing, D Dr. Joseph Garcia 07:08 yeah, I ran into that a lot when I was doing my academic research because, you know, I knew it was possible. And I knew it was common within my social group of deaf friends Joseph Garcia AWP Final Page 3 of 21 Transcribed by https://otter.ai and their infants. But in the hearing world, in the world of academics, you have to prove stuff with clinical studies before they're even going to pay an attention. And if you're a minority, well, then you're definitely going to have to do twice as much to get half as far as what my mother used to say, when I was growing up all the time to son, you're going to have to do twice as much to get half as five to live with that. So I did this study and proved it, you know, which is fine. But until I started traveling around the United States, Canada and Europe and making the argument I got a lot of a lot of blowback, a lot of resistance initially, of course, now it's accepted in almost in some circles, especially here in the Pacific Northwest.