Monday, July 12, 2021

 Monday, July 12, 2021

 

     I slept beautifully. I wasn’t in any discomfort until early in the morning. It has been bad of late, mainly when I sit. The muscles in the back of my left leg seized up. I have been concerned about my prospects for the future. Will I be an old woman, confined to a chair in constant pain? I took acetaminophen yesterday., just one during the day. It cleared up the problem immediately. I can live with taking an anti-inflammatory a couple of times a day. Mind, I only took one pill. Before I went to bed, I took another and drank some of the magnesium powder-mix to help soothe muscles. Things were so bad yesterday that I thought I would have to try Total Hip Replacement. I’m not optimistic that the surgery will fix my problem. It will make it easier for me to stand up after sitting for a while. That I will do.  

      I had an appointment with my primary doctor at Kaiser on Friday for my foot. Last night, I thought it might be a good idea to schedule a surgery appointment, just in case. It will be a good three to four months out, so I will have time to change my mind.

     I spent the morning going down a Quora rabbit hole. I can spend hours reading their blurbs. I particularly like the ones about the British royal family and celebrities. What the hell is wrong with me?

      I had Mama K’s crew at 8:30, but they didn’t sign on. I called. Mama K was still asleep. She jumped up and got the kids on in minutes. I started with E, one of the twins. We have been working on reading words that end in-at, using all the single letters in the alphabet for an initial sound. Last time, I started her on finding those words in a story. She does reasonably well, but not 100%. She read fat for hat and had this weird pronunciation for cat, pronouncing the /k/ sound as /kee/. I asked her if she says she has a /kee-at/ or /cat/. She corrected herself.

     As we went through the story, she said there was another word she knew -tap. She misread the word. She confused tap with pat. I wondered if she even understood that the order of the letters made a difference. It isn’t clear yet that she understands that the letters represent sounds. She made the individual sounds and blended them into words -but it wasn’t clear that she understood the principle. However, she has given me a new activity. I have been struggling with what direction to go next. I planned to work with words ending with -ap, as well as words ending in-at. 

     Then Twin A came on. She could now remember some of the letters she had problems with. But she still had problems remembering the name of the letter i. I told her to instruct her mind to remember it. Why not? She said the words out loud, “Mind, I want you to remember the name of this letter is i.” She did better for the rest of the exercise. I would have to do more BrainManagementSkills with her and twin A.

     Their brother K came on last. I had noticed that he had trouble with the vertical placement of the lowercase j last time. I reviewed that and then had him write the word jump in his lined notebook. He formed the letter well but confined it to one space. I went over the spacing with him. He easily corrected his error. I only had him write his last name again. Last time he had reversed two of the letters. If you’re wondering how all this is supposed to help him, know that sometimes I do, too.  

       I know that he concentrates as he does this work. This is the only activity other than video games- that commanded his attention this way. I knew he enjoyed this work. His mother said he never objects to attending our sessions. I knew from what I learned from another teacher that handwriting is linked to attention. I know that holding the letters in the correct order is important for reading and writing. I know that writing the letters in the right order is preparation for writing words in a sentence correctly. I convinced myself I was on the right track.

      I went for a quick walk before I had 6th grade D at 9:30. Something about his reading has been troubling me. His jerkiness is not just from the inference of the Spanish intonation pattern. Today I had him read simple sentences, one I prepared for 2nd grade A and adolescent D to help them learn missing basic sight words. He read the as a and read showed as should. These are mistakes he made in the first two sentences. There was a processing problem. I began working with him on BrainManagementSkills. 

      I asked him to remember his blanket. He thought about it for a while and announced it was green. I asked him where in his brain he saw the blanket. His first response was he didn’t know. I showed him what I have learned is the best place to use for visual working memory, right behind the forehead. He couldn’t see it there. He tried, and the image slid toward the back of his brain. I drew a picture of the top of his head with a line down the middle, marking one half left and the other right. He said the image slid from the front of his brain toward the back on the left side. I made a mark showing where it stopped. He corrected me, saying it was further back. I assumed this would be a spin pattern. He said it was a curved line but did recognize it as a spin. I stopped there with BMS and went back to reading the sentences.

      I had him write the words on the green blanket where it was in his brain. This helped somewhat. He continued misreading here for there and vice versa. He also added on letters where they didn’t belong. He was a great student to work with. He found the activity fun. He is learning about how his mind works along with me. He can laugh about what his mind does. What a contrast to 2nd grade A, who fought anything that looked unusual. He limited me. Poor kid, his priority was being normal. I couldn’t convince him that his only hope was this somewhat unusual path or some other unusual path. The easy, fall-off-the-log path was not an option for him.

       At 11, I had my Reading support session. I had advertised it on the StepUp and my personal Facebook pages by accident. I still only had one person attend. The volunteer tutors in this program are amazing. Many are students working on advanced degrees. That was the case with the young man today. He said his student had trouble pronouncing words. It sounded more like his student hadn’t heard the words before and didn’t know how they were pronounced. In English, you have to have a word in your listening vocabulary, if not your speaking vocabulary, to know how to pronounce it. The tutor had already turned his student on to looking for repeated patterns. I may have added something to his bag of tricks. However, if you have a student that doesn’t have basic processing problems, it doesn’t take much to push them over the line.

I had a session with adolescent D at1 pm. I continued working with the sentence I had created for drilling the basic sight words. I did some more with the BrainManagementSkills. I had him identify the color of his blanket. His visual working memory was where I think it should be, right behind the forehead. I had him ‘write’ a word on his ‘blanket’ and wait for his mind to tell him what the word was. This made a big difference. Wow! He saw it too. Now, we have to continue with the activity until the neurological circuit is secure. The problem was the difference between how he had been doing it and this ‘new’ way was subtle. It was a small difference in ‘mental depth,’ concentration, and attention. How do you describe that switch in the mental state? How do I keep him aware of the difference and keep him searching for the one that works?

     At 4:30, I had an appointment with my acupuncturist. My foot was still swollen. She said it was edema. She said she didn’t think it was my kidneys because it was only on one side of the body. Kidney problems show up bilaterally. I see my chiropractor tomorrow and my primary doctor at Kaiser on Friday.

      I asked the acupuncturist if she saw a difference in my body alignment. She said definitely. She is very understated. I would be announcing every improvement I see, jumping up and down. She says nothing. I don’t get it. I believe giving feedback helps move things along. People respond when they know what they’re doing is working. Maybe she thought it was all due to her work. Nonsense. Her work was undoubtedly part of the picture, but there was also the yoga and what I did with body mechanics. I’m not an inanimate object to be manipulated.