Thursday, January 12, 2023

 Thursday, January 12, 2023

   My good spirits from last night were with me in the morning. I had to get up earlier than usual. We had morning yoga. I had to get up by six to get in my walk, and Elsa fed before yoga. On yoga mornings, I skip my in-bed exercises; I’d be doing many of them in the yoga class anyway.

   I did some more clipping of the overgrown hedge. I do a little bit most days. I don’t pay the gardeners enough to do that work. I also did some cleanup on the lanai. The furniture was still moved away from the screened wall after Scott moved it away when a bad rainstorm blew in the water. Elsa took advantage of the exposed carpeting and used it for her own purposes.

   I had sessions with the J & Iz siblings. I usually start with third-grade J. I don’t tutor him. Lord knows he is far ahead of his grade level; he needs no academic help. He has a problem with anger management. Today, I had Iz first.

   Iz objected to working with me. This was strange. She has been enthusiastic up to now. She is J’s younger sister. I think she felt she had to dislike it if her brother did.

   Iz made terrific progress in a few sessions. I’ve seen improvement like this before. When the student has no perceptual problems, only confusion about the reading process, The Phonics Discovery System resolves problems in a flash.   Unfortunately, the Share Screen option on Zoom wasn’t working. I had to stop early with Iz. I fixed the problem by restarting the tablet.

   J continued complaining about working with me. He didn’t want to talk about his anger. I’m sure it is very upsetting to talk about something you hate in yourself as much as he hated his uncontrolled rage. I tried several tacks and then returned to the one I had used before with some success.

   I asked him to remember a time this week when he lost his temper. He fell silent. I thought the screen froze. He had a puzzled look on his face. Then he said, “I didn’t lose my temper this week. How did that happen?” Here we have an eight-year-old boy with a good concept of the human psyche to have his mind blown by an unexpected turn of events.  

   I asked his permission to tell his mom that he hadn’t lost his temper in a week. Afterward, I was concerned that he would think the problem was solved and that he would never have to think about it again. Would he have an incident during the week, and we’d be back to square one? Does he believe I performed some miracle cure? I teach the principles of psychology taught in Vipassana Buddhism. You learn a skill. The skill requires regular practice. And there are still times when you’re out of control. I started on this process when I was forty-nine. I hope someone who starts younger can do a better job with it than me. We’ll see, won’t we?