Thursday, July 8, 2021

 Thursday, July 8, 2021

 

            Mama K canceled for her crew today. Her family was off on an adventure.

            I watched the sample of the sliced and spliced video Tommy put together for me. It looked good, not choppy in any way. I discovered I like listening to myself. I can’t imagine everyone will agree with me. Judy says she likes the way I present myself. I’m animated and spontaneous. 

            I had adolescent D at 1. He said he had a good day at school but couldn’t tell me why. I asked if the reading went well. He said no, it was terrible. He made endless mistakes. It’s hard to know if his evaluation of the situation is accurate. His mother heard him read one day and thought he could read 60% of the words now, whereas before, he would only read 10%. Why do I ask? I want him to learn to evaluate his work accurately. He is still too hard on himself.

            We worked with some three-syllable words because that’s where the trouble comes in big time. D can’t keep those syllables separate. He mushes them together, reducing the word to one or two syllables. He loses sounds; he doesn’t say anything resembling the word on the page. 

             I was using a two-pronged approach: 1) forcing his mind to decode a multi-syllable word one syllable at a time, hold on to those distinct sounds, and blend them. 2)  trying the BrainManagementtSkills, which aims to change how his brain works by directly manipulating his brain. 

He is so much more cooperative than he was initially. He is a working partner now. What a change! I suspect this change is more important than anything he can accomplish with the reading.           We worked on one or two words and then returned to the BMS. The white block was still there. He still wanted it to go away. I said his negative reaction was important; it was like a smoke alarm. It warned that something was wrong. However, once the alarm sounded, screaming at it to make a change wouldn’t have any positive effect. We must turn off or ignore the alarm and turn our attention to the fire. He finally agreed there was spinning involved. When the spin was released, he announced he had a backache. Then he told me he had had it for a long time. He did a release from the base of his spin up through the top of his head, where he released it. This is the first time I’d come across a full-body spin release. They were usually just in the head.  

            I suspected an old insult or injury. I told D it wasn’t essential to know what it was. Our mind holds on to old injuries, as it is designed to. We only burn our hands on hot stoves once; after that, our unconscious minds hold on to that information forever. However, there are injuries we want to let go of. I told him to have his forebrain tell the rest of his brain that whatever caused an upset, he had survived it. When he did this, he experienced relaxation. I always look for relaxation as a sign that the work is going in the right direction. If the client experiences increased tension, it signals back off. The body is going into a defensive posture. I always assume there is a reason for that. Pushing against it is never a good idea. It has to be respected. 

            I had J scheduled for 3:30. He didn’t respond. I called. Why can’t I convince him just to text me when something comes up and not make me have to call him? His mom had to babysit. I assumed he had to go with her.