Wednesday, July 21, 2021

 Wednesday, July 21, 2021

 

      I woke up this morning feeling lonely, just ordinary lonely, which means my body wasn’t racked with fear intensifying the loneliness. Today, I just looked over to Mike’s side of the bed and wished he was there. I loved living with that man. He was such a comfort and a joy. 

When working with Mama K’s crew this morning, I started with third-grade K. He wrote his first and last names in no time. He observed that if you add an extra line, the s can become an 8. Thrilling. Look at the observations and connections he was making. Today, I had him write, “The brown fox jumps over the dog.” He remembered the sentence as he wrote. He remembered where brown came in the sentence. He struggled a little with the spelling of brown but thought it out. I had asked him to write all the words in a single line instead of a vertical list of words. He tried. He wrote the first word in the middle of the page so that he couldn’t fit many words on one line. This may be too hard for me to deal with over Zoom. We’ll see.

        I had Twin A first today. She is still working on remembering the alphabet. I only started introducing the -at family. I decided to try the BrainManagementSkills today. I asked her the color of her blanket. Yellow. She closed her eyes when I asked her to see her blanket in her memory. Wow! Twin E had looked up, straining to see the word in her memory with her eyes. Twin A got it. However, she saw it toward the back of her head, where she would wear a headband. I instructed her to see the image on the inside of her forehead. She easily made that switch. 

          Then I proceeded to check her auditory processing center. She pointed to behind her ear, indicating where she stored the memory of the sound. Again, I redirected her to use areas of her brain that I have experienced as more suitable. Again, she was able to make that switch.

     Then I guided her through encoding information into long-term memory and retrieving it. I told her to hold the image of the letter i on her blanket and ask her mind for the name of the letter. She named several letters that she had been having problems with correctly. I asked her to do the same with several other letters she had trouble remembering—even the letter n. Up to now, she figured out the name of the letter by saying the letters in her name, one of which is the letter n. Today, she could “ask her mind” for the name and get it directly from memory.

She had trouble with the letter w. I hadn’t covered it up to now. ‘Her mind” didn’t know it. I had her hold the visual image of the letter in her mind and hear me giving the name of the letter. I instruct children to ‘push the save button,” her nose, and make a clockwise motion above their ear gong to the back of their head. She followed my instructions but used a counterclockwise motion instead of clockwise. I was anxious to have her correct it. She did. 

     Then I instructed her to hold the visual image and ‘ask her mind’ for the name of the letter. She said, “He doesn’t know it.” I have never had a child identify their unconscious mind as something outside of themselves, no less something of a different sex. I will work to help her understand that ‘her mind’ is part of her in response to “her mind” not knowing. I told her to ask her mind to repeat what I had said it was. The answer came up. All very, very exciting.

Then I had Twin E. I reminded her of the work we had done. I was going just to do the routine work, and then I had an idea. I asked her about her blanket—pink as before. When I asked her to remember it, she looked up as she had before. But this time, I told her to keep her eyes closed and see the blanket in her mind. I learned this from Twin A, and it worked like a charm. I reintroduced the word the. She wrote it on her blanket, held the sound of the name of the word in her head, pressed the save button, and sent the information to long-term memory. Then I asked her to retrieve the information using the reverse process. It came up. I hadn’t given her a distractor yet, but yesterday she couldn’t even do this.

       I had sixth-grade D at 10:30. He said the work we had done with the BrainManagementSkills held. He reported that speech sounds remained clear; they didn’t compress as before. Wow! Great! He said he saw a significant improvement in his reading. I had him read fourth-grade material from Barnell Loft that I had transcribed (t-r-a-n-s/c-r-i-b-ed). He read it perfectly. He read so well that I thought it was time to challenge him to work on decoding longer words. I brought up seven-grade reading material from Barnell Loft. He read the transcribed words perfectly. He said he thought he would have an easier time reading the material without the transcription. I had both prepared. He again read perfectly. Wow! Guess his initial problem has been solved.

       However, he had problems with his vocabulary. Because of his reading problem, he had not had the opportunity to learn comprehension strategies. He had trouble reading the word fees. I guided him. “Start with the vowels. Give your best guess for the sound ee might make. Could it make a long /o/? Could it make an /f/ sound?” I think it is as important to know what sounds are not possible as the ones that are. Figuring out a vowel sound in English is a statistical task. He correctly said the long e, the most likely sound for that digraph. He then blended the initial f and the suffix s. I asked him if he knew what the word meant. He said no. I asked if he understood that his mother paid school fees. Yes, he knew what that was. He was not used to using his background knowledge. That’s something I would work on.

As I walked this evening, my foot didn’t hurt at all. All the numbness was gone. It bothered me this morning. The big difference is I treated the right side of my back with the acupuncture pen. Can you believe it? 

 

_____ -_____ -______

Musings:

Dehaene on the role of the conscious mind from his book Consciousness and the Brain.

 

        He argues that the unconscious mind processes all the incoming data. It formulates some simple choices, and the conscious mind makes those final choices. He disagrees with Kahneman that most decisions are made before the conscious mind becomes involved. According to Kahneman, we start the actions before the conscious mind comes online.  

I see the conscious mind as having two functions. First, it vetoes choices. The conscious mind observes the choices of the unconscious mind and intervenes when things look bad. Its second function serves as a gateway between unfamiliar information and the unconscious mind. I would guess that choosing what new information comes in is a joint choice; the conscious and unconscious minds consult if they have a good relationship. Their union is much like a marriage. In a good marriage, both partners have input. Each has veto rights in case of emergency. Once the two parts of the brain have made a joint decision, the conscious mind must take the lead until the process becomes automatic. Then it is the sole domain of the unconscious mind again. Our genius rests in the unconscious, not the conscious mind.