Monday, August 16, 2021

 Monday, August 16, 2021 

 

    I finally got to speak to the dentist this morning. I called requesting a conference two weeks ago. Susan, the receptionist, said to call back if he didn't get back to me. When I spoke to her this morning, she admitted she had forgotten my request, but Dr. Kris was available now. 

    About a month ago, a filling broke in one of my front bottom teeth. When the dentist checked me, he discovered a crop of small cavities in those bottom teeth. He was shocked. He said most people go to their graves with those teeth intact. I have been eating chocolate and then napping without rinsing my mouth. He asked me why I did that. I said, "I'm crazy."  

    Those front teeth are now doomed. Once you get one filling in a tooth, the rest is vulnerable. I'm not overly optimistic about life in the coming years. I'm not totally pessimistic either, but I am preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. That's why I made sure we had enough solar panels and two power walls. That way, if the electric grid goes down, we should be okay and be able to help out the rest of the neighborhood. In the spirit of that sense of caution, I wanted to talk to the dentist about going right for capping the teeth or getting implants. I have the money now; I may not have it in ten years. I want to be prepared to chew on bark and uncooked meat. I'm anticipating the life of a hunter-gatherer- with refrigeration.

    Dr. Kris was more open to my concern than I thought he would be. He prefers a conservative path, but he shares my concern about the future of our world, our civilization. To determine the condition of my jawbone to see if it can support implants, he said he needed to give me a special type of X-ray. I told him that my bone density showed I had the bone mass of an eighty-year-old at fifty. Now that I'm eighty, I also have the bone mass of an eighty-year-old. Who loses bone mass before menopause and not after? I managed it. We would talk about options after the X-rays, which were scheduled for Thursday.

     Dr. Kris also asked me if I was on medication for osteoporosis. At first, I thought he favored the medication. I told him I had been on it. They discovered that it caused osteonecrosis of the jaw at some point, and my doctor took me off the medication. He asked if I had taken it in the last six years. No. I started when I was fifty-two and stopped at sixty-two. That's considerably more than six years ago.

     I had sixth grade D at 8:30. In our last session, I discussed the need to focus on vowel letters when reading. When I showed him how to decode a two-syllable word, he told me he figured out the syllables by focusing on the consonants. Today I asked him if his focus on the consonants was something a teacher told him to do or something he figured out for himself. 

A teacher told him that. OMG! I can understand why a teacher might say that. Identifying the vowels happens automatically for a good reader. They focus consciously on the consonants; identifying syllables by the vowels is a given. 

   I told him to try reading by first focusing on each word's vowels. I put a dot under each vowel letter that represented a sound. In other words, I put no dots under that final silent -e in words. The difference was remarkable. I can't wait to try this with Adolescent D.  

    I have given both boys exercises in vowel identification. I told them to take any document written in English and underline each vowel letter without trying to read the words. Yes, without trying to read the words. Those vowels should jump off the page and bite them on their noses. The results were thrilling. I learn something new every day. It's amazing.

  I sent Judy and Dorothy a copy of the Zoom video recording I made yesterday. I got an email back from Judy telling me that she needed a password. I had no idea what that might be. I thought that if I opened the video myself, copied the information in the address window, and sent it to them, they could see it without a password.  

     By midday, Dorothy wrote that she was feeling lousy and couldn't concentrate enough to view it. Judy passed me on her way to Walmart on one of my walks. She apologized for not viewing the second email with the video. She was busy. She owes me nothing. I hate to make people feel guilty in response to my requests. I like what St. Therese said, "It is a sin to make a gift an obligation."

      I felt blah today. I needed to lift weights, to put out an effort. I finally did some work on the article on my reading method. That made me feel a little better. Procrastinating is so tiring- downright debilitating. Now not all procrastination is bad. Sometimes, it is time to marinate an idea. 

     I had adolescent D at 4:30. He chose to work on the easy reading passage, not the sight word sentences he was already familiar with. I pushed attending to the vowels in each word before trying to read it. Again, I saw a remarkable difference. It's as if the picture became clearer. 

      D told me he wasn't feeling well at the beginning of the session. I told him to let me know when he needed a break, and I would take over. After reading the words starting with the vowels, we started a new activity. I had him sound out each phoneme of the words while I put the dashes, separating one phoneme from the other. He did reasonably well with this. If he does it on his own, he can teach himself to read.  

    Then he started to fade. I took over. I rendered each word phoneme by phoneme. I told him to relax ad just let the sound wash over him. I could feel him relax more; I slowed down and lowered my voice. At the end of the session, I called his name, and he didn't respond. I texted him to assure him that falling asleep was good. Just hearing the sounds changes the nervous system. There is evidence that training in phonics changes the brain. No scientific evidence shows that just hearing words broken down phonemically does that. However, I've had surprising success. (if anyone is interested, See The Phonics Discovery System audio file on YouTube).

      I am using Phase I more than I ever have before. I wondered how much of my reluctance to use an approach was that it is far from the traditional one or how much it is just these kids that need me to make that adjustment.