Tuesday, May 11, 2021

 Tuesday, May 11, 2021

   I had a terrible night's sleep. My adolescent D is so negative. He sees nothing positive about his accomplishments. His negativity about himself hurts him and his family. I feel that he is committed to this position. I have never seen this order of negativity and self-denigration in a child before. Usually, when they see they've made progress, they let go of some of their negativity. They also allow me to help them. D does not. It is driving me crazy. Not a good sign. I can't work with someone who gets under my skin that way. That's not good for them or me. 

Our next-door neighbor Mei joined us for yoga today. She observed the activity in the driveway in the morning and asked about it. She said she had no background in yoga. I assured her Yvette would take good care of her. Mei was a natural for yoga. 

     When I edited my Blog entry from last year, I read that I was doing the same thing then that I was doing now. I was trying out a variation of the 4-second exercise regime then, and I am now. I had remembered reading about it before now, but I had no memory of coming up with the same variation, which I dropped quickly after I started it. 

    Weirder yet, I heard a talk on NPR about how caterpillars dissolve into a liquid when in the cocoon. A butterfly comes out of that liquid. I heard the same lecture again today. Maybe Justine Willis Toms gives that lecture on this date every year.

       I had K right after school. He was a few minutes late. His mother texted me, saying they were just coming home from school. I suggested that we make his appointment a bit later on school days. He needed time to snack and run around for a few minutes. He had enough trouble sitting still and concentrating. We started working on co-writing. The student proposes a topic, and I help them develop it by asking questions. Depending on how verbal they are, I will either do more or less of the writing myself. I have had amazing results with this process. 

       I first started using it over thirty years ago. I was working with a third-grader who was behind in reading. I figured he would be more interested in reading his own stories. He would give me a topic and some information, and I would compose it. After six or so sessions, his mom called me to say that his writing was amazing. I said, "You know, Carol, I'm doing the writing." She said, "You don't understand. He's speaking more." Oh! Since then, I have had parents tell me repeatedly, "You're not going to believe it, but my child is writing, speaking, reading better because of what you're doing." I know it's counterintuitive, but it works. I am modeling good speaking and writing skills. That's how the kids learn. 

K's story-telling skills are weak. He had poor sequencing skills and poor sentence construction. His mother told me he also has poor handwriting. It's actually worse than that. He's at the end of second grade and couldn't write his name correctly. He wrote an e for a g, and left out an o. Oh, boy, We solved the auditory processing problems; now to solve the rest.

After teaching him the bull's eye activity, I started with the 'follow the line' activity to help with K's ADD. I don't know if I already discussed the bull's eye activity. The theory is our attention functions somewhat like a series of concentric circles, like a bull's eye. What we want to focus on is in the center of the bull's eye. All the other input from the environment sits on one of the outer rings. If there is something that deserves our attention, it moves into the center. We do a quick evaluation to determine if that stimulus deserves our full attention. If not, we move it back to one of the peripheral rings. People with ADD have trouble moving the interfering stimulus back out.  

This is the solution I discovered. I instructed a boy to push the stimulus back out to the peripheral rings. It felt like he was trying to push a stalled car single-handed. I asked him if he knew how to play pinball. So far, all the kids I've worked with were familiar with the game. I haven't had to develop something new. I tell them to think of the lever on that machine. Pull it back, release it, and shoot the interfering stimulus back out. So far, so good; it's worked.

Then I worked with the follow-the-line exercise. This works brilliantly on the Zoom whiteboard. I move the stylus slowly across the screen in an unpredictable pattern, now a straight line with a zig or zag to the left or right or a curved line. The student has to watch and wonder which way it will go next.  

Because K has a problem with his handwriting, I applied the same follow-the-line principle to the handwriting exercise. I drew four parallel lines on the screen. Then I started writing his name. After forming each letter, I asked him to close his eyes and see me writing the letters. Whatever else, he finds the exercise interesting. It holds his attention.

My friend Melissa called. She had gone to Honolulu to get her fingerprints taken. Huh? I wondered why she didn't get it at our local police station. I had a problem there. I had to go over to Hilo to get my prints taken on a form where I could fill out the ORI number myself. I subsequently wrote the Chief of Police of the Big Island. I told him the station in Kona had different operating principles than the one in Hilo. The chief rectified the problem and sent me a letter thanking me and detailing what had been done to fix the problem.

When I spoke to Melissa, it became clear her concern wasn't the same as mine. She needed her fingerprints to get an Australian visa. She is an OBGYN and does volunteer work in the outback, working with the indigenous people. She came back from such a trip in March and is planning for another one. She told me that the woman in Kona didn't do a good job taking the prints. When the prints are not suitably clear, the FBI sends them back to be retaken. Melissa said she once had to go back four times. She didn't have time for that game. She wanted her prints taken electronically. No one on the island does that. She found a little old lady on Oahu who does.  

Melissa and Larry made arrangements to rendezvous with the fingerprinting lady at the Honolulu airport. Unfortunately, the machine didn't work well. They had to go to her office on the other side of the island. Larry and Melissa got in this woman's car along with her four grandchildren. Larry and the woman sat in the front. Two of the kids sat in the back with Melissa; the one sitting in the middle had autism and was often violent. Melissa described herself as trying to restrain a "feral' child from grabbing the steering wheel from his grandmother and killing them all. 

This poor woman's daughter had three disabled children. She had an older child with a mild form of autism, a girl who had some speech problems and problems with reading, and then the 'feral' boy. Wow! How's that for a statistic? The grandmother plays a significant role in these children's lives. She homeschool's them. Melissa suggested this poor woman call me for suggestions on how to work with her children.

Before Melissa left for her last trip to Australia, she said Australia required two weeks of total isolation before traveling freely in the country. She anticipated that they would be in a windowless room with tasteless food left outside their door three times a day. As it wound up, they were put up in a four-star hotel, a two-room suite with a beautiful view and great food. The only problem was they couldn't open the windows and breathed no fresh air for fourteen days. Melissa said the Australian officials put you wherever. It's a crapshoot. This next time they may wind up in a windowless room in a Motel Six.

      I had J at 3:30. He was home from school, guaranteed. Ow! This is the second of my children in this situation. A child was infected in M's class here in Hawaii. I'm not clear if the child in J's class had Covid or was just not feeling well, and they took a precaution.

Every morning when I post last year's entry on the public blog, I check the statistics. I usually get the daily number of viewings. It varies between zero and eight-five. Today I found that there were more detailed statistics giving information about the demographic of the readers. 76% of my readership is from Turkey. Turkey?? Really? I don't know if they were just one-time readers or regulars.