I was in good shape after Bikram today. I was going to go to school.
I had time to do some work when I got home. I did some work on the revisions for Chapter 1 on my book on Word Recognition, played some FreeCell, made my breakfast smoothie for the next two days.
When I arrived at school, the open area in the middle of the classrooms was filled with tables and chairs. Third grade was having an awards ceremony today. I checked with B and N in Mrs. D’s room. Neither boy wanted to do any work. I did look at the result of B.’s spelling test. The order of the words was different, which caused him to completely screw up the test. However, most of his mistakes made some sense, which wasn’t the case previously. I knew what each of the words was supposed to be; this is new.
R. wanted to work with me. She read Sassy the Cat with reasonable fluency, making mistakes on his, reading it as him. Oh, well. Two steps forward; one step back. While she has been able to use word family cues, she has not been consciously aware of them. I went through every possible form of -at: bat, cat, dat, fat, gat, hat, jat, kat, lat, mat, nat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat, and zat. I’m a believer in the value of nonsense words. Those nonsense words are often syllables in longer words. It never hurts to say them. (I have avoided the qu- and the w- initial sounds because they introduce a complexity that doesn’t serve my current purpose.)
R. had trouble with that list and wanted to quit. Then I went through the second word family introduced in the first story:-ap: bap, cap, dap, fap, gap, hap, jap, kap, lap, map, nap, pap, rap, sap, tap, vap, zap. She did a little better with this, with a little support from a friend. I am pushing the conscious awareness of word family patterns. Let’s see if it makes a difference. She didn’t want to read any other stories or take any of the stories home to work on. I won’t be going in on Thursday or Friday because of holiday celebrations. I won’t see the kids again until January 6.
I went to Mrs. B.’s room. I. was willing to work with me. Yes, we are seeing improvement in his automatic recall of words from the first sight vocabulary list. The words on the list represent the high-frequency words, words we encounter in all texts. He is remembering more, but there are still many he doesn’t know.
While we were working, parents started arriving for the awards ceremony. He had trouble focusing on what we were doing. I had noticed before that he is easily distracted. I asked him if he would like to be able to control his attention. He said yes.
I drew a bull’s eye and told him we put what we want to focus on in the center of the circle, the innermost circle. When things distract us, they come from the outer rings and shoot into the center circle. I showed him a trick for controlling it.
I asked him if he knew what a pinball machine was, the one where you pulled a lever, released it, and a ball shot out and rolled down the board, hitting bumpers which lit up and made noise when the ball struck it. He said yes. I told him to pull that lever and shoot the thing pushing into the center circle to one of the outer rings.
I learned this years ago, many, many years ago. I was working with a boy who had this problem. When I told him to push the intruding information out, he strained so hard I thought he was trying to lift a car. The image of the pinball machine came to mind. I don’t know if it will work with everyone, but it has helped many kids.
He gave me an odd look. It worked, and he was a little freaked out. He had to get used to the idea that he could actually change the way his mind worked. He also didn’t want to lose his interest in the world at large. I don’t blame him. I don’t either. I told him it hadn’t stopped me from noticing the clouds or the reflections in glass windows as I drive. I can do both.
To practice the activity, I had him put the voice of the teacher organizing the awards event behind us in the center and my voice on one of the outer rings. Then I had him switch it, placing my voice in the center and the other teacher’s on one of the outer rings. We’ll see what he does with this over the vacation. Will he play with it? Will his nonconscious mind work on it in his sleep? Will he be better when we come back? We’ll see.
So far, when I work with I., I have been using books way above his reading level and just pointing to the high-frequency words for him to read. We are not working on comprehension. The kid can’t recognize or decode words. First things first. I’m thinking when we come back, I may put him in the Carpenter materials I have been using with R. I. is much more cognitively advanced than she is. He might move quickly through these materials.
When I got home, I was going to do some laundry. The young woman had done a load, and the laundry line was full with her stuff. Also, it looked like it might rain. I decided to put my laundry off till tomorrow.
I lay down and read. I heard the author of Into the Dreamhouse interviewed. She wrote about her abusive relationship with her lesbian partner. It reminded me of what my mother did. There’s a naivety about the kind of damage that women can do. Had I been in a romantic relationship with a man who treated me as my mother did, there would be no question he was abusive.
However, my mom was complex. Therapists often said she was pre narcissistic. She had been subjected to a horrendous medical procedure to save her life during her first six months in 1904. It left her with an undeveloped understanding of human relations. She genuinely believed that she couldn’t hurt me because she didn’t intend to. She argued that it was impossible. My cries that she hurt me were turned against me. She said I only said it to hurt her. How’s that for crazy-making?
Elsa refused to walk again tonight. I have no idea what motivates this dog. Oh, she found where her favorite ball wound up when I threw it out of reach yesterday. She is too bright for words.
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Musings:
I remember a quote I once read about aspects of ourselves which make wonderful servants and wicked masters. Okay, I just checked the quote online. It doesn’t say what I thought it did. My interpretation, being a reactive personality, was that those uncontrolled impulses are wicked masters that can make wonderful servants. However, the quote I found goes:” The mind is a wonderful servant and a wicked master.” This supports McGilchrist’s thesis that the left brain, the ‘rationale’ mind, should be the servant to the right brain, the intuitive brain.
McGilchrist, who argues for the value of right-brain dominance, does knowledge somewhere that the intuitive brain can run amok. I don’t get it. Why can’t they be equal partners, co-creating our lives together? Why does one have to be the master and the other the emissary or the servant? Yes, they are in conflict with each other, but is the resolution the dominance of one over the other?
Why can we see the left and right brain being worthy opponents, what Mike was looking for in a life partner when I picked me. We were opposites in so many ways. We both believed that we would be improved by the influence of the other. I think we both were improved by the other.
We both inhibited each other’s worst impulses. Everyone has their worst impulses. It was vital that we each recognized bad impulses in ourselves and welcomed the other’s effort to inhibit us.
On the other hand, there were ways that Mike wanted to inhibit me that I didn’t agree with. He was uncomfortable with my ‘friendliness.’ My talking to total strangers about anything. He didn’t get it. Once, he criticized me for the way I approached employees in stores without saying excuse me first. I pointed out to him that there was always eye-contact before I approached someone without saying excuse me first. He learned from me.
Mike was uncomfortable with the random way my mind worked. When he met me, he said that he thought I was one of the brightest people he ever met. Then he declared that I didn’t use my intelligence correctly. Well, this was an on-going area of conflict. The result: I learned to be more mentally discipline, much to my benefit, and Mike learned to appreciate my random association of ideas, even if he couldn’t duplicate it. It meant an improved ability to deal with the unexpected, what for him was chaos. The man was terrified of chaos. One might ask, then why the hell did he marry me? If we’re lucky, we marry what we need.
I am thinking about how grateful I am to Mike for his influence in my life. How he enriched me, helped me grow to be a bigger person, helped me overcome my fears, and fully appreciate my self-worth. He has left me a much richer person than when he found me. I do believe he felt the same about my influence in his life. I would have loved to continue the journey with him. He’s gone in one way, but I talk to him daily.
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