Friday, April 21, 2023

 Friday, April 21, 2023

   Elsa and I did our morning walk. The goal for today was still only 5,000 steps. Monday, it will be two weeks since I fell and hurt my foot. I reduced the number of steps to allow the foot to heal. I did a few things this morning; I posted the daily blog and sprayed two gallons of vinegar, one gallon of 30% and one of 5%, with a dash of Dawn dish soap and a cup of table salt.

  

I had an appointment with Shelly today. I was in a great mood and had nothing specific to work on. She instructed me to observe my body and see what came up. My inclination to put off doing anything came up. This is an old pattern, something I've been working on for years and years. I want to do something; I can even enjoy it, yet I put it off. It's weird. I have often mentioned that my mother yelled at me a lot. Her criticisms of me started with my birth, "Leave it to you to be born at seven pm instead of seven am." Also, she concluded, "I rejected her' because I wouldn't nurse. I had a broken nose. Can you imagine how painful it must have been to have my nose pressed into her breast? How do I know my nose was broken? I was told that I smashed into my mother's hip for several hours before delivery. My dad told me my nose was bright red and pressed against my face when he saw me. No, he didn't see me minutes after I was born. He saw me a good half hour afterward. Men were not allowed in the birthing room at that time. My mother was out cold. He was sitting in the waiting room, where all the men sat, waiting to hear the outcome. Then, a boyfriend pressed the tip of my nose and expressed surprise when my nose collapsed under his touch. Since I had no facial injuries since my birth, I assumed that was the cause of my nose job. The cartilage was compressed and never completely bounced back.

  

Besides my mother finding fault with everything it did, what was particularly painful was when I tried to do it right, and she went ballistic. "You! You! Leave it to you to do ….!" This happens to everyone at some time. In my case, it was nonstop. There's trauma, and then there's endlessly repeated trauma. Lutz talks about using psyllium to reset the nervous system before the trauma. There is no before the trauma for me. Should there be any question, my mom was an amazing, brave woman. She had suffered her own traumas, the first shortly after she was born. She did the best she could. I sat with the lasting impacts. 

   

Then I thought to release all the fear and pain I was carrying for my parents. That's a common response. Children figure if they can help their parents, they'll be better parents. They have to keep those folks alive and functioning for their survival. I felt such sadness and love for my parents as I released the pain. They loved my sister and me passionately. They just passed on their sins, the ones they hadn't resolved. If everyone who saw themselves as flawed didn't have children, the human race would have died off years ago.

  

I took a nap after the session. When I got up, I remembered all my thoughts on the video on blending speech sounds I wanted to make. I wrote a rough draft. Let's see if I get further than that. Adolescent D and I have a lot in common. I'm not quite as stuck as he is. I learned courage and fortitude from my family. Push through. Do the best you can. Survive! They did. They were part of the great generation.

  

 

I texted Brian that my Internet was glitching every few minutes and shutting down completely when I left the computer. He texted back that everything looked fine on his end. What did his end have to do with mine? I asked if there couldn't be a problem with the transmission from his house to mine; maybe a tree blocked it. There could also be a problem with the wiring within the house. He called me. When he said 'his end,' he meant he checked out my complete system. He suggested that I shut down my computer periodically. Windows can interfere with Internet transmissions. Brian has taught me if something is not working right, I should restart my computer. That solves most problems.

  

While I had him on the phone, I told him about the problem I had with Yahoo. When I got on to Yahoo to send an email, it didn't automatically give me the person's email address. I had to go through my old emails to find the missing addresses. Brian said he would be over in an hour.

   

He didn't know exactly what the problem was with Yahoo, so he reverted to the classic iteration. Yahoo had updated me and erased me in the process. You've got to love those updates! He showed me where the address list was. There was a clear heading, "ADDRESSES." I hadn't seen it. That's when he showed me how Yahoo had made that file inaccessible, too. 

   

I told him I had texted Tommy and had no response. Tommy helped me edit and post the videos for my reading method. He had administrative access to the YouTube account; I didn't. I planned to do a video of Phase III showing how to apply the process to spelling. I put it off and put it off; I'm still putting it off, an example of my heightened procrastination skills. Brian told me Tommy had moved to Seattle. He gave me Tommy's new number. No wonder he didn't respond when I texted him on his Hawaii number. I wonder why he got a new phone already. It took me two years to switch from my Ohio number to a local one.

   

I had an appointment with Adolescent D at two. He called minutes before he was to sign in to ask if we could postpone until tomorrow. He had something to do today. Minutes later, I got a text from his mom, saying D and his dad got their wires crossed. The plans were for tomorrow, not for today. Could we still meet? We started the session at two thirty.  

   

D told me he was hiding something from everyone that would make us all hate him, including me and his mom. While it's none of my business, it also drives me nuts. What could he be hiding from us that is so monumental? I had already proposed his academic failures, something to do with his sexuality or his anger. He said none of those. I felt like the princess in Rumpelstiltskin. I kept guessing. I don't have to know what it is to help him; only he does. It's just me feeling I have to know to know. It's an itch I need to scratch. Today, I guessed he felt like an alien. He had no idea what I was talking about. While I didn't have to know the answer to that question, I did have to get him to a point where he did something for himself, anything other than turn on a video or play a computer game.

  

I heard D's mother in the background. I called out to her to ask if she wanted to observe the session. I couldn't do the deep psychological work if she did. (Yes, she knew I was doing that work with him. It helped somewhat. She had seen some changes.) D said she had no place else to go. Someone was cleaning their house; she needed to hide in his room. I asked him if he would prefer not to work on the psychological issues while she was there. We worked on reading.

   

I gave D three choices: 1) we could read third-grade passages for fluency; 2) we could do Phase I, where I say the word, he figures out the number of syllables in the word, says each syllable separately, figures out the individual sounds within each syllable and what letter(s) might represent that sound. I gave him the word resources. He first said there were only two syllables. When I asked him what each sounded like, he corrected himself- three. He pronounced the individual syllables as re/sours/es. It's not the way I say it. Each person says it somewhat differently. He had to discover this for himself if his division didn't work. If he needed help, I would pitch in. 

  

He got all the sounds correct in the first two syllables. He had no problem re. On sours, he heard the /or/. I was so excited. He wondered whether to spell the /s/ sound with an s or a c. I recommend using the most common spelling for a sound when in doubt. Someone will still be able to read it. The -es at the end of the word was the most difficult. While pronounced as a short/i/, it is spelled with an e. D got it. Then, he spelled the final /s/ with a z. In this case, it doesn't make a /z/ sound. I did the test for this word; did spell check recognize it? It didn't work with the z at the end; I changed it to an s. Bam! Spell check identified it. 

  

I don't see the purpose of targeting perfect spelling with a child like this. It's good enough if someone can read it; it's even better if spell check recognizes it and gives you the correct spelling.

   

We did one word in Phase I and two in Phase II. We only had three minutes left when I gave him the second one. "Will we have time to finish this in the time left?" He tried to worm his way out. "We'll get done as much as we can." The word was consultant. 

  

He quickly identified the vowel letters and that they all made sounds. He told me there were three syllables because there were three vowel sounds. Yay! He put lines, separating the vowel letters into separate syllables. He identified the syllable type of the six standard ones. He had trouble remembering if a vowel was long or short. He'd make the right vowel sound and then misidentify it. 

    

Regarding sul, he correctly identified the vowel sound and tried blending su instead of ul. Vowel sounds are determined by the sound after, not the one before. I don't know how often I've told him how to do it.

  

Moreover, he gets it wrong every time he blends the vowel with the preceding consonant. When he uses the consonant behind the vowel, as long as it is in the same syllable, he gets it right. When he did the third syllable, he said, "I recognize ant," and blended it with the /t/ sound. Then, he had to blend all three syllables. That was a challenge. It's easier to juggle two balls at a time; it's a whole different thing to juggle three or more. That's what it was like for this kid. He kept losing the middle syllable, /sul/. I used backward build-up to solve this. Blend /sul/ with /tant/. Once that was secure, he added on the /con/. It is a neurological trick. He got it in three minutes. I was exultant.

  I called his mom to let her know. I thought she heard us working. No, she hadn't heard a word. She had earphones on, and the housekeeper was running the vacuum. D and I hadn't worked on phonics decoding for a while. I was focused on getting him to complete his school assignment of a video interview with someone who lived on the island. I made some progress. I got him thinking about who he would interview and what he would ask. That's as far as we got. He remembered much more than I expected about the decoding processes. I thought I was going to have to start from scratch. The break may be just what we needed. Some of the procedures I've been teaching must have gotten consolidated in long-term memory.

  

This reminds me: His mom told me a frustrating story. She bought him a driver's manual and placed it on his desk. She walked into his room one day and saw him reading it. She expressed pleasure. His dad walked in right behind her. He also expressed pleasure. D's response, "Well, now you ruined everything." He put the book down. Let's see if he ever picks it up again. Knowing him, he would rather never drive than deal with their hopeful expectations.