Monday, July 19, 2021

 Monday, July 19, 2021

 

   I had a terrible night's sleep. I suffered from an acute sense of loneliness. I feel unprotected. Mike was my shield. He not only loved me, but he also protected me and comforted me. What a gift!

On my walk, I called Dorothy. I wanted to hear about her adventures in Connecticut. She said Uncle David's stint with Sam during the memorial service wasn't a 100% success. Sam was agitated. He has become very clingy during this process. Let's see, he was 2 ½ years old; for the past two weeks, he had been around eight upset adults as they waited for his grandmother to die; he attended a wedding; Nancy died; he was trying to cope with her disappearance and process what it means for her to be 'dead;" the house has been filled with people every day as the family sits shiva; and finally, his parents completely abandoned him when they attend the memorial service. Given what the poor kid had to deal with, he was doing pretty well.

A neighbor of Nancy and Steve's offered to put Dorothy up. She said she had luxury accommodations and barely saw her hosts. When she was up, she spent all her time next door with her daughter's in-laws.

Uncle David, Dorothy's son and Karin's brother had taken the train up to Connecticut Sunday morning to take care of Sam while everyone was at the funeral. That evening, Dorothy and Uncle David caught the train back to New Jersey.

      At 8:30, I had K's crew. With K, I'm working on handwriting and spelling. With Twin A, I worked on having her recall a few letters she still had problems with and introduced the -at family. She read cat, bat, rat, sat. I asked if she wanted another or wanted to quit. She asked for more. Twin E did pretty well but not perfectly. She had trouble holding on to the sound differences between cat and cap, mat and map, rat and rap as she blended those words. I started her on a sight word today, THE. No, she didn't know what it was. Ow!  

     I was inclined to use the BrainManagementSkills with Twin E for the first time. She could tell me the color of her blanket, pink, but she could not 'see' where she held the memory in her brain. When I told her it was behind her forehead, she raised her eyes to see it. It looked like that yoga move when you raise your eyes to see your eyebrows. This meant she had no concept of 'seeing' an image in her mind. She believes all 'seeing' is done with her eyes. I've had only a few kids do that. Most have some concept of 'seeing' in their minds. I will continue with this. I may need her mother's help.

     At 9:30, I had a session with sixth-grade D. We started with the BrainManagementSkills. I reviewed what we determined so far. He could hold the visual image steadily in a section toward the back of the brain on the left side. It sure isn't what I'm familiar with, but if it works for him, good enough. He pointed to his forehead when we looked for the auditory center today. That's the part of the brain I associate with visual processing. I asked him to focus on the part of the brain on the left side by the temple. He said he experiences zigzagging there. The words become compressed.

I knew a spin release would be good here, but it didn't seem right. I asked sixth-grade D questions about the area: what color was it? How big? And the area's density. How did he feel about it? I don't remember all the questions I asked. He did say there was zigzag movement in that area of the brain. The lines would compress. The compression had to do with creating order. However, that same compression mashed the sounds of the words together, making them unintelligible; it was hard for him to understand what his teachers said. It didn't feel right to instruct him to do the spin release then. I have no idea why, but better safe than sorry. 

The zigzag pattern slipped to the back of his head as he focused on it. I told him he could release it from his head altogether by just permitting it to leave. He did that. I warned him it might feel a little weird. That was because it was unfamiliar, not because it was dangerous. I asked him if he found the process interesting or scary. He said interesting. Perfect. If it's scary, I tell them to stop. I assured D I could help him slow the process down or stop it altogether; he was in control. I have never had a bad outcome with this process. However, I don't think it will work if someone is afraid. If a student is afraid, they are battling against the release. Then it won't happen.

When he completed the release, he reported that the sound of my voice was clearer and easier to understand. His mind wasn't collapsing the words together. I followed this by reading words one phoneme at a time. I asked him how it felt. He said he wanted me to say one letter at a time. I saw he still didn't understand that English orthography is not a one-to-one correspondence with English phonemes. Then he said he wanted to say them on his own. I underlined each letter or set of letters that represented a single phoneme. He did a fantastic job sounding them accurately in accordance with his pronunciation. I told him he might experience other incidents of that spinning and compression. All he had to do was instruct his mind to allow the release of that zigzag. He had a minor occurrence as we continued working. He was able to release it on his own. He knew what to do before I even told him. This was going to be interesting. I would see him again on Wednesday. 

At 11, I had my Reading support office hours. No one attended for the second week in a row. I advertised it on Facebook, but I don't think Julia announced it.

I planned to watch a Tv series Judy told me about on the life of Christ, The Chosen. I told her it was on Netflix. I downloaded that movie. Strange! It was a modern-day setting with a half-naked man being told to worship the one God and stabbed with a shard of glass from a broken bottle. Huh? I checked it on Wiki. This was not the movie Judy had recommended. When I looked up how to download the one she recommended, I saw it was some complicated process.