Saturday, September 18, 2021

 Saturday, September 18, 2021

 

   I started work at 8 am this morning with the sisters W & M., a first-grade repeater, because of her reading problems. We continued reading the Carpenter stories. She did well with story number one. She got 100% accuracy, acing words she had trouble with before. I took her through stories #2 and #3. She still reads very deliberately. I have to decide when I will try to get her to switch to automatic processing. 

   Her sister W had the same problem. I asked her if she saw improvement. She said no, not really; she was not much better. She was still far behind other students in her class. Her reading is slow and deliberate. Today she made more errors than I have seen before. She said she was tired. I said, great. Read in a relaxed way. Let’s see what happens. She read a sentence quickly. I told her that was good. She said they were ‘kindergarten words.’ She often misses of, for, and from; they are also kindergarten words. I talked to her about the different modalities of the brain. There’s the ‘kindergarten’ modality, which is automaticity. Another part of the brain looks for errors in word accuracy and meaning. W. over-emphasizes meaning as she reads. This makes sense. Since she had trouble with word accuracy, figuring them out from context worked for her. The second modality I dubbed the 5th grade one. Here she uses conscious knowledge to decode to figure out the word.   

   W’s mom came on Zoom. I asked her if she heard a difference. She said she wasn’t reading quickly enough. She was training her on “one-minute” reading drills. I went into this big spiel about how I disagreed with exercises that just worked for speed. Then mom told me that these drills prepped the students before they had to race the clock. The program read the paragraph to the student and discussed its meaning. Only then did the student read the paragraph out loud. That is a different story. I thought this could be used in combination with W reading in the ‘kindergarten’ modality. I described the two mental modalities when reading. I said it’s like the AA prayer; you have to know how to use each modality and have the wisdom to know when to use them.

   I was supposed to have an appointment with adolescent D at 10:30. His mom texted me and asked if we could push it back to 11:30. When adolescent D signed on, I picked up on the discussion on his ‘accidents’ where we left off. Whenever he makes a mistake, he says, “It was just a mistake,’ defensively. I have said, “Of course, it was a mistake. I didn’t think you did it deliberately. Everyone makes mistakes. You make a lot of them. It suggests you have a problem. We can’t solve this problem unless you acknowledge you have one.” I told him that if I couldn’t fix the problem, someone would solve it within ten years. He admits that he doesn’t describe things well. I’m beginning to believe he has a general word retrieval or memory problem. Both make his learning disability more serious than just a reading problem. 

     I asked him what he experienced when he couldn’t remember. He didn’t know. I laid out some options for him.

1. He became confused between the information his two hemispheres gave him. There was zig-zagging between the two.

2. He used his visual perceptual system to perceive sounds or his auditory processing center to perceive letters.

3. He used his right hemisphere to process letters and speech sounds.

4. He experienced neurological disturbances as he tried to read or recall.

The list of what causes some of these brain patterns is more numerous than the list.

    That’s all I did for the day on the BrainManagementSkills. We went to work on reading. We worked on the basic sight vocabulary list. D always takes a long time to respond. I often ask him if there is a problem. He says no. Today, I started counting the number of seconds he took before he said the name of the word. Previously, he took up to ten seconds to respond. Once I told him this was a problem, he dramatically improved. He could identify the word within 4 to 8 seconds.  

   On a positive note: while he misread the word pine as pin, he could remember the rule for the pronunciation of the word. It looks like repeating a pattern helps.

   I also asked him if he was listening to the Five Stories audio file. No. While I can’t guarantee that listening will correct his auditory processing problem, I have had enough success that it is worthwhile trying. He is so passive; so is his mom. She does not have any learning difficulties that she has reported. I am getting to a point where I’m prepared to quit unless they try it at least a few times a week for a month. It doesn’t cost them anything. It requires minimal effort; he can listen to it when he sleeps. Why won’t they make an effort? I can understand D’s problem. He’s lucky he can remember being in school earlier in the day. But mom????

     I tried to meet with E., a student I got through the Step-Up Tutoring Program. I volunteered to help students that had severe reading problems. What a disaster! I wasn’t given contact information. When I asked my contact how to contact the family, she said through Zoom. Okay, how do we connect through Zoom? Don’t we need an id number or an email address? I was told I was supposed to connect through Remind. I had no idea how to do that. Finally, I got dad to send his email. That took half an hour. And then, there was no sound. I couldn’t hear her, and she couldn’t hear me. I checked and rechecked the sound buttons on my computer. It all seemed to be working. Several people struggled on her side. It all ended when someone on her side just left the Zoom meeting. 

   I worked on the air conditioner remote. I scraped the terminals and tried new batteries. It didn’t work. It’s done; I will need to buy a new one. The folks at Cosco told me to get the model number off my air conditioner. My air conditioner was installed above a window. I got up on a step ladder. There is no way I could get high enough to read the plaque on the side of it. I used my phone to take a picture. Perfect!  

   I had a follow-up appointment for my stem cell platelet treatment. Today was a blood platelet injection. The doctor told me my blood looked good. What does that mean? What does blood look like when it is not good? Cloudy. Mine was clear. I am healthy as a horse.  

     I’m not totally convinced that stem cell treatment does any good. I just thought it was worth a try since I had the money to do it. The doctor, Steve, said the stem cells do whatever they do. However, they expire in a year. How the hell do they know this? He injects the platelets into my hip joint with a very long needle. Today, the right hip hurt like hell. It is usually the one that barely hurts. Not today. I was worried about the left but went ahead. Lo and behold, I had zero discomfort when he injected the left hip joint. Is this a good sign or a bad one? Did he inject the serum in the wrong place? Looks somewhat like a crapshoot to me. I figure it won’t kill me – well, I sure hope not. That would be a bummer. I have one more treatment in November. That will be the ozone injection. 

  During my before-dinner walk with Elsa, I spent a lot of time talking to Olga. I’m making a point of talking to people more because I need face-to-face contact. I learned her daughter, Alexandra, is one of two semi-finalists for the National Merit Scholarship on the Big Island. The Private school announced their student’s success immediately. The public school, which Alexandra attends, said nothing. The private school uses student success to advertise its excellence. The public schools do not need to advertise and couldn’t care less. It does nothing for them. Alexandra wants to go to Cornell. I think she’s got a good chance of getting in.  

    I read the Elephant Whisperer before sleeping tonight. Ah! Lovely. It’s a story about love and kindness, reaching out to frightened, desperate animals to make a safe home for them, even at the risk of their own lives. Such a relief, given the current political situation.

    It’s also a good lesson for me. While I want to be a loving, understanding person, I often miss the mark. I get scared; like all frightened animals, I am dangerous to others—such a disappointment. With Mike, I was never afraid. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get angry, but never that scary anger that comes from feeling weak and overpowered. It’s not that he never turned his arrogance on me; it’s that I deeply believed he didn’t want to be that person. That wasn’t his strongest motivation. He had enough strength for that. I had enough strength to be a better person with him too. Sadly, I don’t have that with everyone

  While weak people are dangerous, there is one that is even more dangerous in my view—the person who cannot face their failure to be the person they want to be. I thought of this analogy. An expectant parent has visions of the wonderful parent they will be, always kind, gentle, and understanding. Then the kid arrives. There are bound to be disappointments. Who gets blamed, the kid, or does the parent accept the failure as their own- regardless of the challenges their child may present? The person who can’t accept their failure, blames and punishes the child-those are really scary people.