Monday, April 12, 2021

Monday, April 12, 2021

 

 I slept well, needed fewer naps, and had more energy since I started rubbing the Magnesium oil on my legs at night. Coincidence or cause and effect? I didn't know if it had affected the spasming in my leg muscles. Sometimes, I think it made it worse. It may be that the muscles are starting to relax, and that's why that's happening.

            On my walk this morning, I noticed some dark objects in Darby's driveway. Yep, it was poop, huge chunks. That must have been one hell of a dog! Darby came out as I was bending down to pick it up. She had noticed it but thought they were leaves. She knew which animal had dumped it there when she saw it- a pig. She said their poop looks barrel-shaped. That's what it was.

            Darby told me she heard about romance scammers being put on trial for their behavior and their victims speaking up in their defense. They claimed it was a fair exchange. I understood. There was an intimacy in the exchange, an intimacy I had lost when Mike died. How does one describe that intimacy: someone wants something from you that's personal, that belongs to you without being actually abusive, or at least not verbally or physically? I knew something was wrong when the scammers worked me, but it also felt good. A recent widow, what could be better?

            I got a call from my financial advisor this morning at Raymond James. He has become concerned about how I spend money.   I have recently made some large payments, and now I have decided to distribute money to my inheritors. I'm not giving them $15,000 a year allowed per person. That would be too much for me. I'm doing $5,000 per person. I also have a substantial loan planned. Understandably he was concerned because I was almost sucked into a scam to the tune of $6,000. I went over my reasoning for the large expenses I have made over the last three years: I paid off the mortgage, so we're not vulnerable to the bank, bought a new car, and installed a solar system. These are all expenses that were either necessary or money savers. My monthly expenses run somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand. The gardeners are my single regular house-related expense.  

            I have been feeling pretty good despite problems with three family members. They are not comfortable with some prominent characteristics of my personality. I have to be the one who always wants to work things out. I have changed my tune. I want to set limits. I know, I know. Most people would subtly do this; I have to declare it. I don't do much subtly. I like things out in the open. Well, this is the last time they'll have to deal with that discomfort.   Or- it may be that this stand will radically improve things between me and those genuinely interested in improved relations. There are those I am entirely too much for, and it's not worth any effort. They may wish otherwise because I am one of their few close relatives, but it isn't going to work. Oh, well.

            I thought I would be distressed today, having isolated myself from three people, but no—quite the opposite. I felt calmer than I had felt in a long time. Very interesting. I ate less chocolate. I now think much of my agitation is from forcing myself to deal with difficult situations. That was how I grew up coping with difficult situations, trying to resolve them, so I got along with everyone. It took great effort on my part. I had to think a great deal about how to approach those people. I'm not giving them much thought right now. Wow! I have some faith that if this is best for me, it will be best for everyone. 

            On one of my walks, it occurred to me that reconciliation can only happen when everyone is ready. In the meantime, a separate peace may be all that is possible. That means I live with a semi-permeable boundary, finding what I can share with people and ignoring the rest. It's the AA prayer: change what I can, accept what I can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. As with all other things, timing is everything. 

            In the meantime, I spent about an hour practicing and reworking the video presentation for the Phonics Discovery System for YouTube posting. I think it will have to be a two-part video, or more like two videos, each 45 minutes apiece. The process is simple, but the concept is unfamiliar.

            I had three students today: J., my Step-Up student. I wanted to do 10 minutes of phonemic breakdown. I set the timer. In the middle, I got a text asking if I could meet with my 4pm student fifteen minutes earlier. J switched to some work he was having problems with. He did well on an article he had to read. Then we watched a video on volcanoes. We = yes, we- missed 3 out of 10 questions. One I got right, but since I wasn't absolutely sure of my answer, he gave a different answer. One was wrong. It claimed that the volcanos in Hawaii weren't hot spot volcanoes. No. They are. They had the answer wrong. I had to cut it short with J because of my next student. I can be flexible with him. We can do forty-five minutes here, an hour there, and then half an hour some other time. We're both flexible. 

            I had my adolescent D.  He said yes; he could read the words in his video game a little better. He also said he didn't see any improvement. I do. I'm wondering if his criterion for progress is having attained his goal of reading on grade level. I'm going to give him a SUDS, where he has to evaluate his rate of improvement on a number line. This should be interesting. He does say he can use his auditory center more. This should make an enormous difference. I had to keep pushing him to use cross-body blending. When he did, he was successful. I also had to repeatedly remind him not to start decoding a word with the initial letters unless he had determined the vowel's sound with the consonants that followed. When students don't follow procedures, I want to bang my head against the wall. 

            I had I at 4:00. We continued working on the Barnell Loft materials on Drawing Conclusions. She's in third-grade material, which is on a fourth-grade level; well, at least it was considered fourth grade when I was a kid. (One of the guys who put this series together was my sister-in-law's fifth-grade teacher.) She read sounds smooth now; her decoding skills were good. There were only a few spots where she needed some assistance. She also catches errors on her own. Her reading comprehension is pretty good. She missed some words. I would challenge her; she would reread it and get it. I had to reread the passage on one item myself. 

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Musings:

            I watch a TED talk on communication and the brain. When a particular scene came on, I realized that I had seen this before, but I had a completely different reaction this time. 

            I have thought for years that our brain patterns develop because we make a Xerox copy of the brains of others, particularly our parents. This talk was on brain entrainment, which is how two brains manifest the same brain activity. I use the word manifest because the patterns show up as the same on brain scans.  

            Our brains at rest show a scattered, irregular pattern like a Jackson Pollack painting. Our minds are all over the place, jumping from one thought to another. When we are all listening to the same story, our brains fall in sync. We crave synchronicity with others. It's a basic human need. If our parents have not developed brains that focus, we wind up with brains that cannot focus.  

            A focused brain is desirable, particularly in school environments; however, it has its downsides too. The brain that can connect random bits of information is the creative brain. If we have parents whose brains are too focused, we lose that aspect of ourselves as we entrain with their pattern. 

            There are always those offspring who do not follow the family pattern. Things happen. Each person has their own experiences. Something may have occurred that set that child on another path. I'm working with two children who had bad ear infections as children. There is a significant correlation between ear infections and dyslexia. Shit happens. But we can assume that most people develop following the pattern of one of their parents.

            We need all kinds of brains in society. One person may be more one way than the other. We are a diverse society; we need diverse brains.     

            For better or worse, we are a society that demands competence in dealing with abstract symbols, letters and numbers, and abstract thought. This stimulus is not as compelling as hands-on work that provides more sensory stimulation. Some adaptations can be made to accommodate these limitations. I want to propose a different approach to help those with ADD focus on the abstract. I feel somewhat sad thinking that these folks may find themselves squeezed into a small space after living in such a large unfocused one. But it's survival. 

            People with ADD find difficulty focusing on subtle stimulation. They can't control what they focus on. Their brain has to be hijacked by strong stimulation for them to be able to focus. We can help them be more engaged with subtle, abstract stimulation by training them to be aware of the sensory details of that stimulation.

            We already know that phonetics training changes the brain. Neuroscientists have seen the brain images of those who have difficulty reading versus those who don't. Different parts of the brain are engaged. With phonetics training, parts of the less active brain become more so. Phonetics is definitely a way to go. 

            Focusing on phonemic awareness helps develop underdeveloped parts of the brain. The simple solution is to make every speech sound in every word in a text, not just the phonetically regular ones, and name every letter in continuous text. 

            If there is a pattern of learning difficulties in families, the parents should do the work along with the child. Oh, I can see a problem here. If a parent is highly competent and the child is struggling, there will be weak entrainment. That weak entrainment will negatively impact the child and create an aversion to the activity. Don't have an immediate solution.